Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2026/07/31/nx-s1-5910660/big-oil-earnings-q2-2026 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49137024 Points: 44 # Comments: 42

The logos for ExxonMobil and Chevron appear on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on July 24. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption Chevron just announced its highest quarterly earnings ever. Shell clocked its second-highest quarterly profits. And while ExxonMobil's profits came in beneath what Wall Street analysts had expected, it still managed to double its earnings compared with this time last year. Combined, the three companies raked in, on average, some $404 million in profits every day for the last three months. It's a bonanza for those companies (and for their executives). And it's raising eyebrows and ire among some European lawmakers and Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who are calling for windfall taxes on those companies. The war with Iran has effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a crucial waterway for crude oil exports. (On Thursday, only five ships were confirmed to have transited the strait, according to the trade intelligence group Kpler.) Some oil from the Persian Gulf is reaching the market through other routes, although new threats are putting pressure on some of those alternatives. The conflict in the Middle East has also blocked exports of refined fuels, like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Meanwhile, Ukraine's attacks on Russia's oil-refining infrastructure have worsened the world's shortage of those fuels. The world's oil consumers have felt the result: higher prices for fuel and, in turn, higher prices for everything else. The world's oil producers have felt it too — in higher margins for the crude oil and refined fuels that they sell.