Oil Giants Post Record Profits, Refuse to Drill More — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Exxon Mobil earned $14.5 billion in the spring quarter, with Chevron landing a record $12 billion and Shell posting $9.8 billion — more than double its year-ago earnings — as Strait of Hormuz disruptions rerouted shipments and squeezed refining capacity.
- Exxon CEO Darren Woods said the company lost roughly 10% of upstream production but still delivered 'exceptional financial results,' while Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg they 'did not change any of our plan' even as prices climbed.
- Oil majors are funneling profits to shareholders rather than drilling new wells, a multi-year 'capital discipline' shift that has frustrated Trump — including his push to pry open Venezuelan oil fields after Nicolas Maduro's January detention, where drilling stayed low.
- President Trump has accused oil companies of 'making too much money' from the war, but Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis analyst Clark Williams-Derry said companies 'respond more to financial incentives than they do to political signaling,' noting the U.S. rig count only ticked up after the Iran war began and remained at last June's level.
- Wood Mackenzie's Tom Ellacott called capital discipline 'more durable than either the bears or bulls expected' and warned that disciplined supermajors could lose global market share to state-owned producers like Saudi Arabia's.
- The Trump administration paid TotalEnergies more than $900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina, while tight spending sidelines renewable investment across most of the industry — TotalEnergies is now the sole supermajor still pushing clean energy.
Why it matters: With oil companies prioritizing shareholder returns over new drilling despite record profits, Americans face structurally higher pump prices that Trump's political pressure cannot reverse. Williams-Derry's core point: companies respond to financial incentives, not politicians — meaning the 'unleash energy' agenda loses to Wall Street's discipline mandate, and disciplined supermajors risk ceding market share to state-owned producers abroad.
Ask SkimNews
