Buildling A Wall Of Money - Oil Majors Will Likely Use Exploding Profits To Lock In Trump-Era Policies
The billions in profits big oil is reaping due to the Iran war may stymie the energy transition, experts and advocates fear, incentivizing oil and gas expansion and boosting the sector’s funds for political lobbying. “Windfall profits from Trump’s war will allow big oil to build a wall of money around its Trump-era political victories,” said Lukas Shankar-Ross, a deputy director at the green group Friends of the Earth.
The deadly conflict in Iran has created a historic energy shock due to attacks on fossil fuel facilities and the blockage of the crucial strait of Hormuz trade route. Amid the chaos, energy prices – and oil companies’ earnings – have soared. ConocoPhillips last week reported $2.3bn in profits for the first three months of 2026, up 84% from before the war began. Meanwhile, the top petroleum refiner Valero Energy announced quarterly profits of $1.2bn, beating estimates. Liberty Energy, founded and formerly run by Donald Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, saw quarterly earnings of $10m, up 32% from before the war began. BP, meanwhile, said it had seen “exceptional” performance, more than doubling its profits during the year’s first quarter, while Shell on Thursday also reported its first-quarter profits were stronger than expected.
The oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil both saw their profits drop during the first three months of 2026, executives reported in earnings calls. Yet in short order, that trajectory will shift, analysts say. Consensus estimates shows ExxonMobil’s second-quarter earnings will more than double from a year ago, while Chevron profits are expected to increase by 56% for the year.
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It’s a concern that Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk, economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, raised in the wake of the last major fuel shock, resulting from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Cashflows are up, so there’s more money to go around, including for lobbying,” said Semieniuk. “In the US, there’s also the narrative that the US is lucky to have its own fossil fuel supply right now [to serve as a backstop to supply shortages]. So they are helped by the ability to capitalize on being the saviors of the moment.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/07/iran-war-big-oil-climate