Oil Giants Post Record Profits, Refuse to Drill More
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- Exxon Mobil posted $14.5 billion in spring-quarter profits, Chevron posted a record $12 billion, and Shell earned $9.8 billion — more than double its year-ago figure — driven largely by Strait of Hormuz blockade rerouting and constrained refining capacity.
- Exxon CEO Darren Woods said the company 'delivered exceptional financial results' despite losing roughly 10% of upstream production, while Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg, 'We did not change any of our plan' even as prices rose.
- Oil majors are funneling record profits to shareholders rather than new wells, maintaining 'capital discipline' that frustrates the Trump administration's drilling agenda — Trump himself has accused companies of 'making too much money' from the war.
- Corporate interest in Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro's January detention and in newly opened federal lands stayed 'lukewarm,' per Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis analyst Clark Williams-Derry, who said oil companies 'respond more to financial incentives than they do to political signaling.'
- The discipline shift traces to investor backlash after the 2014 Saudi-led price crash and 2020 COVID crash; Wood Mackenzie's Tom Ellacott said 'capital discipline has proved more durable than either the bears or bulls expected,' and U.S. rig counts as of June had only recovered to the prior year's rate per Baker Hughes data.
- Williams-Derry's cash-flow analysis found that in periods without price spikes, oil majors collectively took on debt to maintain large investor payouts, meaning wars — not production growth — have become the structural profit engine for international oil companies.
- The Trump administration paid TotalEnergies more than $900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina; Chinese solar panel and EV exports spiked during the war, while Wood Mackenzie projects disciplined majors could cede global market share to state-owned competitors like Saudi Arabia's national oil company.
Why it matters: Oil giants pocketed record war-driven profits yet refused to expand drilling, so American consumers keep paying elevated gas prices while producers prioritize shareholder returns — a dynamic **Wood Mackenzie** projects could cost Western oil majors market share to state-owned competitors like **Saudi Arabia's** national oil company and reshape energy security politics.
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