Trump Attacks Oil War Profits as European Majors Bank Wartime Trading Gains
Aramco's $33.4 billion Q2, European trading windfalls and fresh OPEC+ output additions land as Iran deal progress pulls Brent below $80.
US President Trump publicly attacked oil companies for "making too much money" from the Iran war on Tuesday (2026-08-04), ordering retailers to lower fuel prices, even as Saudi Aramco reported second-quarter net income of $33.4 billion, up 33% year-on-year, with the state producer having realized an average $108.10 per barrel during a quarter when the conflict drove crude sharply higher.6
ICE Brent crude front-month traded at $79.33 as of Thursday (2026-08-06), weighed by US and Qatari signals of progress toward an Iran draft deal, oilprice.com reported. Seven OPEC+ member countries also agreed to raise collective output targets by 188,000 barrels per day in September, completing the phased unwind of 1.65 million b/d in voluntary cuts first announced in 2023.6
Europe's energy majors hold the largest gains from the war period. The share prices of TotalEnergies, BP and Eni have risen 14-17% since fighting began, The Economist reported. Shell is up 4% over the same period. US majors moved in the opposite direction: Chevron is down 1%, ExxonMobil down 2%.3
The divergence runs through trading desks. BP's segment hosting its trading and optimization unit earned $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up from close to nothing a year earlier. TotalEnergies' equivalent unit generated $1.6 billion in Q1, a fivefold increase on the same period in 2025. TotalEnergies Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanné separately said the company's oil trading profit doubled to around $1 billion in Q1 after going on a crude buying spree ahead of the conflict's escalation.3,4
That exposure gave European majors a windfall their US peers could not replicate. Chevron and ExxonMobil reported Q1 2026 net incomes of $2.2 billion and $4.2 billion respectively, down 37% and 46% year-on-year, with neither company having comparable trading infrastructure to monetize wartime price dislocations.3
Shell, on July 7 (2026-07-07), signalled it expected significantly higher oil and LNG trading results in the second quarter as the Iran war drove extreme market volatility.5
The profits drew criticism in Europe before the White House weighed in. Analysts told Montel in the week of May 18, 2026 that the region's energy majors were the "elephant in the room" of the crisis, urging governments to tackle surging wartime profits while industry and consumers absorbed elevated energy costs. EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen said the situation was "as serious as the 1973 and 2022 crises combined." Montel reported BP was set to see first-quarter profit double to £2.7 billion as a direct result of the conflict.1
The macroeconomic backdrop complicates the profit picture. Goldman Sachs estimated the Iran war would knock 0.3 percentage points from US GDP growth this year, lowering it to 2.2%. The S&P 500 has fallen roughly 4% since fighting broke out, with ten of eleven major equity sectors declining. The energy sector has been the exception, gaining more than 4% over the same period.2
How deeply crude slides on an Iran deal now shapes the second-half profit picture for oil majors. Aramco's $108.10 average realized Q2 barrel already sits well above ICE Brent front-month at $79.33 as of Thursday (2026-08-06), a gap that widens as talks progress. OPEC+ adding 188,000 b/d in September while negotiations advance makes any sustained price recovery harder to construct — and the wartime trading windfalls that powered European results in the first half harder to repeat.6