Fossil Fuel Executives Cash In
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- Friends of the Earth researchers found insiders sold almost $400 million in fossil fuel company stocks in the months since the Iran war began, with share prices rising after the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran.
- ConocoPhillips executives reported the highest insider sales at $96 million, followed by senior leaders at natural gas exporters Cheniere Energy and Venture Global.
- For all three top-selling companies — ConocoPhillips, Cheniere, and Venture Global — executive stock sales since the war began already exceed their totals for all of 2025.
- Diamondback Energy also reported high insider sales, but the analysis determined those transactions were largely unrelated to the war.
- Critics argue the companies' robust wartime profits came at the expense of consumers paying more for electricity and gasoline, and some Democratic policymakers have called for windfall taxes to reclaim a portion of those earnings.
- Lukas Shankar-Ross, deputy program director at Friends of the Earth, accused fossil gas exporters Cheniere and Venture of using "Trump's war to mint dynastic wealth" while putting upward pressure on consumer costs nationwide.
- The figures were compiled from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and trading company stock is legal for corporate leaders even during wartime price spikes.
Why it matters: The insider sales data reframes the war's economic fallout: while American consumers absorb higher electricity and gasoline bills from the supply crunch, executives at the companies profiting from those prices have already liquidated more stock in months since the war began than they did during all of 2025 — converting a national crisis into personal liquidity at ConocoPhillips, Cheniere, and Venture Global.
