Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis
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- Saudi Aramco led the eight oil majors with $33bn+ in Q2 net income (up 34%), even as Iranian and Houthi drone and missile strikes damaged its infrastructure.
- BP posted $5.73bn in quarterly profits—its highest since Russia's first full year of war in Ukraine and more than double the prior quarter's $2.5bn—with new CEO Meg O'Neill defending the figure as supplying products in short supply.
- Shell reported its second-highest quarterly profits ever at $9.84bn despite billions in war-related damage to its Qatar gas operations, while Equinor posted $3.2bn (up from $1.8bn a year earlier).
- Chevron posted $12.2bn (a fivefold increase) and ExxonMobil $14.5bn (its highest since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine), drawing Trump's accusation that the pair were 'making too much money' from his war on Iran.
- BP has slashed its annual energy transition budget from $5bn to $1.5-2bn, put its 60-year-old North Sea business up for sale, and is selling its $4bn US biogas unit while in advanced talks to divest its Lightsource solar business to a Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund-backed consortium.
- Campaigners and UN climate chief Simon Stiell linked the companies' emissions to an estimated 20,000 heatwave deaths in Europe, record 42.5°C temperatures in South Korea and Japan, drought-driven crop losses, and deadly wildfires across southern Europe, the US, and Canada.
Why it matters: Eight oil majors nearly doubled profits to $93bn in a single quarter while BP alone slashed its renewable budget by billions, leaving households to absorb higher bills and governments to fund mounting climate damage from Europe's deadly heatwaves to record Asian temperatures. Trump's rare public criticism of Chevron and ExxonMobil shows even industry allies see the windfall as politically untenable ahead of November's midterm elections.
