Oil Prices Today: Big Oil Refining Profits Surge
When President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office in early August and accused the biggest oil companies of making too much money, he was speaking to a frustration that millions of American drivers already felt at the pump. Fuel was expensive, diesel was scarce in places, and the companies that turn crude oil into gasoline were reporting results that made headlines. Less than three months later, those same companies have reported third-quarter results that are larger still, and the president’s own language about them has changed completely. In one summer, the story has moved from a public scolding to a celebration of a fortune, and the numbers in between explain why the politics of fuel prices are now so tangled.
The latest earnings reports, published on Friday, October 30, show an industry in the middle of an extraordinary run. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the two largest American oil companies, both beat analysts’ expectations, and their refining divisions — the plants that convert crude into gasoline, diesel and heating oil — produced the strongest results either company has recorded in years. Across the five largest Western oil producers, adjusted profits for the quarter reached $56.3 billion, according to figures reported by Bloomberg. That is not one company’s windfall. It is a sector-wide surge, driven by war, disrupted shipping, damaged refineries abroad, and a global fuel market short of supply for months. For drivers, the same forces that lifted those profits also lifted the price of every gallon they bought.
Oil Prices Today: What the Earnings Reports Show
Start with ExxonMobil, because its result sets the tone for the whole earnings season. The company earned $15.4 billion in the third quarter, more than double the $7.5 billion it earned in the same quarter a year earlier, a rise of 104 percent. On an adjusted basis, earnings came to $4.23 a share, ahead of what analysts had expected, and the result was the company’s fourth-highest quarterly profit in its 156-year history and its highest since 2022. Chevron was not far behind. Its net income reached $9.9 billion, almost three times the $3.5 billion it reported a year earlier, while adjusted earnings rose 186 percent to $10.4 billion, or $5.28 a share, also above expectations. Together with BP, Shell and TotalEnergies, the five companies beat forecasts across the board, with Shell alone reporting $12 billion for the quarter, up 127 percent from a year earlier, and BP reporting $8.46 billion on an adjusted basis, more than half of it coming from the unit that includes refining and trading.
The most striking part of the results is refining. ExxonMobil’s refining division earned a record $9.05 billion on an adjusted basis, nearly five times what it earned a year earlier. On a reported basis, the company’s Energy Products segment, which houses its refineries, earned $7.17 billion, edging ahead of the $7.09 billion earned by its oil and gas production business for the first time in at least six years. On the adjusted measure the gap was wider, at $9.05 billion against $7.31 billion from production. That is a remarkable reversal for a company long defined by finding and pumping oil: in this quarter, turning oil into fuel was the bigger money-maker. Chevron’s story was similar. Its downstream business, which refines and sells fuel, earned $4.93 billion, up from $1.14 billion a year earlier and the highest result in at least six years. Inside that total, its American refining operations alone earned $3.6 billion, roughly five times the previous year’s figure.
Those profits did not come from selling a little more fuel at the same margin. They came from running refineries harder, in a market where fuel itself had become scarce. ExxonMobil produced 5.8 million barrels a day of refined products around the world and set a record in North America, while its refineries on the United States Gulf Coast ran at 100 percent crude unit utilisation. By squeezing more fuel out of its plants, the company added an extra 80,000 barrels a day to the market in June and July alone. Chevron’s American refineries processed a record 1.09 million barrels of crude a day, running at nearly 98 percent of capacity, after fixing bottlenecks and expanding capacity at two major plants, in Pasadena, Texas, and Pascagoula, Mississippi, lifting its output of distillates — effectively diesel and heating oil — by 10 percent. Both companies pushed their fuel-making divisions close to their limits to take advantage of diesel prices that had climbed to record levels in September, and both exported record amounts of fuel.
The backdrop is the war that began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran. International oil prices have climbed by almost 60 percent since then, according to Bloomberg, and the conflict severely disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that previously handled the equivalent of roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption. At the same time, refineries in Russia and the Middle East were hit by drone strikes and other attacks, knocking fuel-making capacity offline at the very moment the world needed it most. Refining became a second choke point on top of crude supply itself. When capacity is tight and demand for diesel and gasoline holds up, the margin between the price of crude and the price of finished fuel widens sharply, and the companies that own working refineries capture that margin. That is what the third-quarter numbers show, in unusually plain form.
Stock Market Today: How Wall Street Reacted
Investors greeted the results with enthusiasm. Shares in both ExxonMobil and Chevron rose on Friday, as traders digested results that beat forecasts on both the top and bottom lines. ExxonMobil reported revenue of $113.2 billion, ahead of the $103.1 billion analysts had expected, while Chevron reported revenue of $67.8 billion against expectations of $61.6 billion. The companies also returned large sums to shareholders: ExxonMobil sent $9.4 billion to investors through dividends and share repurchases during the quarter, raised its dividend for the 44th consecutive year, and pledged to maintain $20 billion a year in buy-backs. Chevron said it would use excess cash to pay down debt and strengthen its balance sheet, a signal that its managers expect the good times to be managed carefully rather than spent at once.
The reaction matters beyond the two companies, because in stock market today terms, energy has become one of the forces shaping the broader market’s mood. When the largest oil producers report results this strong, it lifts the energy sector, supports dividend income for pension funds and other long-term holders, and reminds traders that high fuel prices, painful as they are for consumers, are profitable for producers. That tension — between shareholders who benefit and drivers who pay — is the central political problem in this story, and it is why the president’s shifting tone has drawn so much attention. A market rally built on refining margins is, in effect, a transfer from the pump to the shareholder, and in an election year that transfer is never just a financial fact. It is a campaign issue.
Company executives framed the results differently. ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods told CNBC that refining capacity was tight and that diesel was a critical factor, given its essential role in economic activity, from trucking and farming to heating and industry. His chief financial officer, Neil Hansen, said the profit surge was less a windfall than a reward for ramping up production at a time when it was most needed. Woods also pointed to $16.9 billion of cost savings since 2019, arguing that the company’s earnings power had expanded in a lasting way rather than simply riding favourable prices and margins. Chevron chief financial officer Eimear Bonner struck a similar note, saying the company was using its extra cash to reduce debt and strengthen its finances. The message from both boardrooms was consistent: we ran our plants harder, we invested, and we delivered fuel when the system was stressed. Critics will hear that differently, but it is the case the companies are making, and it will be tested as fuel prices move.
Economy News: What Drivers Are Paying at the Pump
For most Americans, the earnings reports are not abstract. They show up as a number on a roadside sign, and that number has been high all year. During the third quarter, the national average for gasoline was $4.12 a gallon, according to AAA, up 96 cents from a year earlier and the highest on record for that quarter. As of Friday, the average had reached $4.20 a gallon, up from $2.98 before the conflict began, according to figures cited in a New York Times analysis. That is a rise of more than 40 percent since late February, and it has filtered through the whole economy. Farmers have struggled to afford diesel to run their equipment during harvest, some homeowners have faced record heating oil costs, and households have now paid $1,184 more on average since the start of the war for more expensive gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, according to Moody’s Analytics.
The scale of the industry’s gains over the full period is even larger than a single quarter suggests. More than 50 major American oil and gas companies have earned over $130 billion in total profits between April and September, nearly three times the less than $47 billion they earned in the same period last year, according to the same New York Times analysis. That six-month haul covers the heart of the war period, and it explains why the debate about profits has become so heated. When a sector earns three times as much as it did a year earlier while consumers pay record prices, questions follow naturally: how much of the increase is an unavoidable consequence of war and disrupted supply, and how much is a margin that could have been narrower? The companies argue the former, pointing to damaged refineries abroad and a genuine shortage of fuel-making capacity. Their critics argue the latter, pointing to record refining margins and record shareholder returns. The truth almost certainly contains elements of both, but the political argument will not wait for a settled answer.
There is also a wider economy news context that complicates any simple story of hardship. High fuel prices have not yet weighed too heavily on the overall American economy, which grew faster than economists predicted, at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the third quarter, according to Wall Street Journal reporting. That growth, however, does not erase the uneven burden: fuel costs hit lower-income households, rural drivers, truckers and farmers hardest, because they drive further, haul more, and have fewer alternatives. A national average can hide a great deal, and a growing economy can coexist with real pressure at the pump. That unevenness is precisely why fuel prices matter so much in the final days before the midterm elections on November 3, when voters will decide control of Congress. A voter who has just paid $4.20 a gallon does not experience the economy as a growth rate. They experience it as a receipt.
Business News: From Criticism to Celebration
No part of this story has changed more visibly than the president’s own position. In August, after the companies reported strong summer earnings, Trump singled out ExxonMobil and Chevron in the Oval Office and urged them to return some of their profits to the public and cut retail fuel prices. “When you look at one company where they made 12 times what they made the year before, they ought to give some of that back to the public,” he told reporters on August 3, in remarks reported by the New York Post. He said the companies were “making too much money” while motorists grappled with sharply higher fuel prices, and his criticism echoed an earlier argument by former President Joe Biden, who had accused the industry of price gouging in 2022. For a president who describes himself as a champion of free enterprise, it was a striking intervention: a direct appeal for private companies to surrender profits in the name of the public.
By last weekend, the tone had reversed. At a campaign event in Georgia on Saturday, Trump praised the industry’s booming profits and said the country was making a fortune from events in the Middle East. “Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East, because they’re coming to Texas and they’re coming to Oklahoma and they’re coming to Louisiana and they’re taking that oil,” he told supporters. “We’re making a freaking fortune.” The White House defended the comments, with an official telling CNN that the president was pointing to the United States’ position as the world’s top producer and exporter of oil, and that unleashing American energy dominance had strengthened national security and increased national wealth. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers added that the president’s top priority was lowering gas prices for Americans. Days later, at a rally in Texas, Trump told supporters that prices would come down “very soon”, batting away concerns that gasoline and diesel prices were higher on average during his second term than under his predecessor.
The reversal has also revived attention to the president’s own financial interest in the sector. Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee reported last weekend that, based on his financial disclosure documents, his ownership in oil companies had grown by as much as $35.8 million in the first half of the year, bringing his net oil and gas holdings to as much as $81.6 million, and that 94 percent of his 2026 oil and gas purchases occurred after the start of the war. The White House said there was nothing improper about the returns, and that the gains reflected the positive stock market performance under his administration. That exchange is not new — the underlying committee report dates to October 26–27 and was already widely reported — but it forms part of the background to the current debate, because it sharpens the question of who benefits when refining profits surge. ExxonMobil and Chevron shares have both risen about 52 percent so far this year, and their shareholders, whoever they are, have shared in the gains.
What Happens Next
The immediate question is whether fuel prices ease, and whether refining margins narrow, in the weeks ahead. Much depends on factors outside any one company’s control: whether shipping through the Strait of Hormuz stabilises, whether damaged refineries in Russia and the Middle East return to service, and whether global demand for diesel softens as winter approaches. If capacity comes back online, margins should compress, and pump prices should follow, though rarely as quickly as they rose. If disruptions persist, the same tight market that produced record third-quarter profits could produce another strong quarter, and with it another round of political argument. The companies have signalled that they expect volatility ahead, and their emphasis on debt reduction and balance-sheet strength suggests they are preparing for a market that can turn as sharply as it has already turned this year.
For the administration, the political timetable is unforgiving. The midterms are days away, and fuel prices are one of the few economic facts that voters encounter every week, in person, with no filter. A promise that prices will fall “very soon” will be tested at the pump, not in a press release, and a celebration of industry profits sits awkwardly beside a household budget stretched by diesel and heating oil. For the companies, the test is different: whether they can sustain high utilisation and high output without fresh disruptions, and whether their argument — that they delivered fuel when the system was stressed — survives scrutiny if margins stay at record levels while prices stay high. And for drivers, the test is the simplest of all: the next fill-up. The third quarter is now history, recorded in earnings reports and shareholder returns. What it cost, and who paid for it, is still being counted, one gallon at a time.
Source: CNBC