Big Oil Is Seeing Windfall Profits as Trump’s War on Iran Drives Up Prices

While the U.S. war on Iran is broadly unpopular in the U.S, including among a growing number of Donald Trump voters, at least one of the president’s core constituencies is happy: Big Oil.

The war’s straining of the global oil supply chain has delivered windfall profits to major fossil fuel corporations. The top two U.S. oil companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron, recently disclosed an astounding $26.5 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2026. Top independent U.S. oil refiners like Marathon, Valero, and Phillips 66 are seeing similar explosions in profits. Globally, a Guardian study found that eight of the world’s top oil companies took in more than $90 billion, or “more than $700,000 of profit every minute over the spring quarter.”

The word “oil company” might evoke generic imagery of rigs and refineries. But behind these entities are executives, board members, and top investors who are primary beneficiaries of Big Oil’s war profiteering and who hold commanding power within a fossil fuel power structure that stretches well beyond oil company boardrooms and into Wall Street and the corporate establishment more widely.

Big Oil’s War Profits

ExxonMobil and Chevron are the two largest U.S. oil corporations, together worth around $1 trillion. They are massive integrated fossil fuel companies whose operations span the entire chain of oil and gas production, and who have a presence across virtually the entire world.

In July, the two oil juggernauts together reported $26.5 billion in net income during the second quarter of 2026 — April through June of this year — as “they cashed in on surging crude and petrol prices caused by Donald Trump’s Iran war,” wrote the Financial Times.

Comparisons with last year provide a metric for measuring these enormous returns. In 2025, ExxonMobil reported second-quarter total earnings of $7.08 billion. In 2026, by comparison, that number leapt to $14.53 billion — more than a 105 percent increase, and “its best quarterly profit since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in oil prices,” according to the Financial Times.

In 2025, Chevron reported second-quarter earnings of $2.49 billion. In 2026, that number skyrocketed nearly four times — 384.7 percent — to $12.07 billion, which is Chevron’s largest quarterly haul ever.

The two corporations’ share prices have also soared compared to last year. On August 10, 2026, ExxonMobil’s share price closed at $159.79 — a 51 percent increase from its closing price of $105.83 on August 11, 2025. Similarly, Chevron’s share price closed at $194.91 on August 10, 2026 — a 27 percent increase from its closing of $153.45 on August 11, 2025.

These numbers mean one thing: huge profits funneled to a tiny stratum at the expense of the many who face rising energy prices and the destruction of war. As the nonprofit Oil Change International put it, “there is a massive transfer of wealth occurring as billions around the world struggle with high energy prices while an elite few reap the windfall.”

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has majorly disrupted global oil and gas supply chains through attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure throughout the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the passthrough for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Corporate giants with global operations like ExxonMobil and Chevron are in a position to continue supplying higher-priced oil. “Both companies have boosted production to near-record levels and are running refineries close to maximum capacity to supply petrol, diesel and other products to customers affected by the Middle East conflict,” said the Financial Times.

Fossil Fuel CEOs

Among those positioned to benefit from the fossil fuel industry’s war profits are Big Oil’s top executives. CEOs of corporations like ExxonMobil and Chevron are not only compensated astronomical amounts but also enjoy incentive structures that promise expanded pay packages if they rake in company profits and deliver hefty returns to shareholders. A huge swath of CEO and other top executive compensation also derives from company stock, whose share price has boomed.

ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods took over $113 million in total compensation since 2023, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement. That same filing stated that Woods held 374,437 shares of ExxonMobil stock as of February 28, 2026, which would be worth nearly $60 million based on ExxonMobil’s share price at the time of this article’s publication.

Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth has been compensated over $86 million since 2023, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement. Wirth held 1,312,423 shares of Chevron stock as of March 16, 2026, which would be worth over $250 million based on Chevron’s share price at the time this article was published. An August 5, 2026, filing shows that Wirth recently sold off 5,547 shares, worth over $10.3 million.

These CEOs benefit when their companies reap in big profits and deliver dividends and rising share prices — aided by stock buybacks — to wealthy shareholders. For example, only 10 percent of Woods’s direct compensation comes from a base salary, whereas 70 percent is tied to performance “link[ing] pay to returns of long-term shareholders.” Wirth has similar performance incentives, meaning he stands to personally pull in millions more if Chevron posts higher profits and shareholder returns.

And while CEOs almost always rake in the most compensation among company insiders, other top executives also own huge amounts of company stock. For example, as of March 2026, Chevron’s Vice-Chairman Mark A. Nelson held 261,019 company shares and Chevron Chief Legal Officer R. Hewitt Pate held 195,474 company shares — and it’s a similar story with ExxonMobil C-suite executives.

Wall Street Investors

Other prime beneficiaries of Big Oil’s war profits are its top institutional investors, made up of the biggest Wall Street firms. These firms — big banks and asset managers — collectively invest billions in ExxonMobil and Chevron, and they profit from rising stock prices and payouts of stock dividends and share repurchases.

For example, ExxonMobil paid out a whopping $9.4 billion through dividends and stock buybacks — $4.3 billion of the former and $5.1 billion of the latter — to its shareholders during the second quarter of 2026, essentially creating a conveyer belt delivering huge swaths of its wartime profits to Wall Street.

Who are these investors, exactly? The top three shareholders of ExxonMobil’s common stock, as of March 10, 2026, were three of the world’s biggest asset managers: Vanguard Group, with a 10.4 percent stake; BlackRock, with a 6.5 percent stake, and State Street, with a 5.1 percent.

These same three asset manager giants were also the top three shareholders of Chevron as of March 2026, with Vanguard Group having a 8.56 percent stake, State Street a 7.50 percent stake, and BlackRock a 7.00 percent stake.

One of these firms, BlackRock, is the world’s biggest asset manager, overseeing $15.3 trillion in assets. BlackRock’s billionaire cofounder and CEO Larry Fink is one of the most powerful people on Wall Street and, as Truthout has reported, BlackRock has been among the firms driving the data center boom.

Chevron also disclosed a fourth beneficiary owner: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, with a 6.70 percent stake. While Buffett retired as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO at the end of 2025, the 95-year-old remains one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Moreover, Chevron makes up 4.67 percent of Buffett and Berkshire’s portfolio — a huge investment for them relative to other major institutional investors. (That number was recently 6.64 percent, but Berkshire Hathaway sold off $8 billion in Chevron stock in May 2026 as its share prices boomed).

These asset manager behemoths buy and sell stock daily and weekly, so these specific numbers and rankings have fluctuated since earlier this year, but the basic picture — these firms among the top three or four owners of Big Oil and many other companies — persists.

Moreover, firms like BlackRock and Vanguard are merely those who are “beneficial owners” with at least a 5 percent stake. Other Wall Street firms have major stakes in both companies that are below the 5 percent threshold, including Fidelity, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Farm, Goldman Sachs, and others.

Board Directors Cash In

Board directors who govern ExxonMobil and Chevron also benefit from Big Oil’s boom in wartime profits. Directors are big individual stockholders, in large part because a significant chunk of their compensation comes in the form of stock awards. For example, most Chevron directors received $235,000 in stock awards in 2025, while most ExxonMobil directors received $269,850 in stock awards.

Some board directors are especially large shareholders of company stock. For example, ExxonMobil director Michael J. Angelakis holds 61,292 shares of the company, and director Jay Hooley — who sits at the nexus of oil and finance power, as a director of insurance giant Liberty Mutual and the former CEO of asset manager behemoth State Street — holds 23,218 ExxonMobil shares.

Importantly, the composition of board memberships also illustrates how the heights of governance of Big Oil are intertwined with the wider corporate power structure.

Board directors at ExxonMobil and Chevron are also currently top executives or advisors at companies such as Meta, Global Infrastructure Partners (owned by BlackRock), and Mastercard; former top executives at firms like Goldman Sachs, MetLife, Raytheon, and Caterpillar; and current board directors at other companies like Walmart, Liberty Mutual, Lockheed Martin, Starbucks, and Johnson & Johnson.

Board directors at ExxonMobil and Chevron also have current or former ties — as trustees, advisors, and other roles — to universities such as USC, University of Alabama, Vanderbilt, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and others.

Tax Oil Profits

For the strata of ultra-wealthy investors, directors, and executives overseeing major oil companies, the U.S. war on Iran means big profits. “The longer the war drags on, the more profitable this year is likely to be for oil companies, which generally benefit when energy is scarce and prices are high,” writes The New York Times.

In addition to trying to end the Trump administration’s illegal and unpopular war on Iran, there are growing calls for a special tax on Big Oil’s huge wartime profits. In March, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Congressman Ro Khanna (D-California) reintroduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, which would raise tens of billions by taxing Big Oil’s windfall profits to deliver rebates of a few hundred dollars each to U.S. households.

This is one measure that could put a check on corporate power’s shameless profiteering off a war that is causing devastation abroad and economic distress in the U.S. — though it’s merely one step in addressing the glaring need to transition away from an energy system dependent on fossil fuels and a status quo where U.S. imperial power can recklessly destabilize the world, ruin lives, and divert resources away from meeting human needs and into the pockets of executives.