Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis
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- Saudi Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron, and ExxonMobil collectively earned nearly $93bn (£69bn) in Q2 2025, almost double the ~$50bn they made in the same quarter last year — equating to more than $700,000 of profit every minute over the spring quarter.
- Saudi Aramco reported a 34% rise in quarterly net income to over $33bn, even as Iranian and Houthi drone and missile strikes damaged its infrastructure during the war.
- BP posted $5.73bn in quarterly profits — its highest since the first year of Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine and more than double the $2.5bn of the previous quarter — under new CEO Meg O'Neill, while quietly cutting its annual energy transition budget from $5bn to $1.5-$2bn.
- Shell logged its second-highest quarterly profits ever at $9.84bn despite billions of dollars in damage to its Qatar gas plant from the war; Equinor profits climbed to $3.2bn from $1.8bn a year earlier.
- Donald Trump broke with industry allies and publicly accused Chevron ($12.2bn quarterly profit, a fivefold increase) and ExxonMobil ($14.5bn, double last year and its highest since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine) of "making too much money" from his war on Iran.
- Campaigners from Global Witness and Friends of the Earth demanded oil giants "pay up to repair the climate breakdown," as UN climate chief Simon Stiell warned that "climate-driven disasters are reaching nightmare proportions."
- The climate toll this summer includes Europe's worst-ever heatwave killing an estimated 20,000 people — close to 3,000 in the UK in May-June alone — plus 9m tonnes of lost grain in the UK and major wildfires across France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.
Why it matters: The eight oil companies earned over $700,000 per minute while BP slashed its energy transition budget from $5bn to $1.5-$2bn — even as UN-linked estimates attribute ~20,000 deaths to Europe's record heatwave and link emissions from these very producers to previously 'impossible' heat extremes. Notably, even Trump — historically aligned with oil interests — publicly rebuked Chevron and ExxonMobil for profiteering ahead of midterm elections, marking a rare political crack in the industry's wartime windfall.
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