Trump’s Disastrous War Has Been Great For Big Oil Companies
Trump’s Disastrous War Has Been Great For Big Oil Companies
Dave JamiesonTue, October 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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With gas prices up 40% over the past year and diesel near a record high, U.S. drivers are wincing every time they stop to fill up their tanks ― unless they happen to have a stake in the big oil-and-gas companies.
President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran has driven up crude oil prices and made life more expensive for working-class people across the globe. But it has also ushered in a period of windfall profits for fossil fuel companies that can capitalize on higher fuel prices and juicier margins in their refining businesses.
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It is just one way Trump’s war is enriching a select few while making basic necessities less affordable for everyone else due to inflation.
“It’s a really good time to be in the oil business and in the refinery business if you’re in the United States,” said Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
“If you knew this war was coming, it would have been a good time to buy stock in the companies that can refine product, as well as the oil producers,” he added.
Iran’s throttling of the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S-Israeli attacks has created a global supply crunch for crude oil, driving up prices for gasoline and diesel around the world. Houthi attacks on Saudi refineries and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries have also contributed to the shortage. The price of Brent crude was $109 a barrel on Monday, up nearly 80% from last October.
The profits for Big Oil are huge, and they are coming straight out of the pockets of American consumers at a time when many people are feeling the pinch.Jeff Colgan, Brown University
The crisis has created huge opportunities for the biggest oil companies. ExxonMobil doubled its profits in the second quarter compared to a year earlier, hitting $14.5 billion, while Chevron more than quadrupled its own, reaching $12.1 billion. ExxonMobil said Friday it expects higher refining margins to give it a $4.5 billion profit boost when the third-quarter earnings are announced later this month.
Patrick Pouyanné, head of the French energy company TotalEnergies, summed up the dynamic when he declared earlier this month that Trump’s destabilizing of the Middle East had created “plenty of opportunities if you’re able to capture them.” His company announced last week it expects its cash flow to reach “exceptional levels” due to refining profits.
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“I prefer the world of disruption to the peaceful world,” Pouyanné said.
Jeff Colgan, director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, said oil companies are “making money hand over fist” due to the oil supply squeeze.
“The profits for Big Oil are huge, and they are coming straight out of the pockets of American consumers at a time when many people are feeling the pinch,” he said.
Colgan’s lab has created an energy cost tracker that estimates the cost burden the Iran war has created for Americans. As of Monday, the typical household has paid an extra $585 for gasoline due to higher prices since the war started, while higher diesel prices that filter through to consumer goods have cost the typical household an additional $474.
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Trump has tried to portray high oil prices as a good thing. “We’re making a fortune,” he said at a speech stop last week.Finn Gomez via Getty Images
The higher fuel prices have caused a broader spike in inflation that could end up costing Republicans the House and possibly the Senate in next month’s elections. Inflation has outpaced wage growth year-over-year for six straight months, meaning U.S. workers have seen an effective pay cut largely due to the war.
Just as he has failed to extract the U.S. from the conflict, Trump has struggled politically to reconcile the soaring oil profits with the economic pain felt by voters as the midterms approach. In August, the president publicly criticized ExxonMobil and Chevron for making “too much money” off the crisis he had created, claiming the companies would have to “give some of that back to the public.”
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But more recently he has tried to spin the profit windfall for oil companies as a good thing.
Trump declared at a rally in Arizona last week that states like Texas and Oklahoma are “making a fortune” due to the surge in energy prices ― a claim that might seem counterintuitive to truckers that are going out of business amid the skyrocketing cost of diesel.
“Our country is making more money than it’s ever made because of the fact that oil is so high,” Trump boasted, adding that he was reluctant to say so because his words would be twisted.
He’s proud of it. He’s making these guys billions of dollars and sticking it to American drivers.Former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Trump
The remark echoed one he made in March asserting “we make a lot of money” when gas prices go up.
Former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said those statements were evidence of the “naked corruption and cruelty of Donald Trump.”
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“The ‘we’ is he and his corrupt partners,” Inslee told HuffPost.
Inslee, who works with Climate Power, a group that advocates for clean energy, noted that during his 2024 campaign, Trump explicitly asked oil executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in exchange for a rollback of environmental regulations and other policies sought by the industry. Trump has largely made good on that deal, undoing stronger fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and weakening the Environmental Protection Agency.
“You could tell he’s really happy about it,” Inslee said of Trump and oil profits. “He’s got a sickening smile on his face every time he talks about it. … He’s proud of it. He’s making these guys billions of dollars and sticking it to American drivers.”
“Americans are outraged by it, because they get it,” he added. “They understand who he’s working for.”
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Some lawmakers are pushing for a windfall tax to claw back some of the profits oil companies are reaping from the war. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced a bill with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that would require large oil producers to pay a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between current prices and last year’s prices, with the money raised being sent to consumers as a quarterly rebate.
Whitehouse told HuffPost the legislation would “give back some of the excess billions they gouged from American consumers as prices soared from Trump’s war in the Middle East.”
“Big Oil is raking in massive refinery profits off of sky-high diesel prices and bragging about their greed to shareholders,” Whitehouse said through a spokesperson.
Berkeley’s Borenstein said it’s natural for people to feel angry over oil profits when higher gas prices are eating their paychecks. But he said the oil companies are simply “in the right place at the right time,” and are no different from a homeowner who happens to be selling in a hot housing market.
“U.S. oil companies certainly are not the ones causing the price of oil to go up,” he said. “But if you’re an oil producer you’re making boatloads of money.”
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Source: “AOL Money”
