Just days before a midterm election dominated by voter anger over inflation and the economy, a fresh wave of oil company earnings reports threatens to drive more discontent, as high gas prices translate into windfall profits for some of the industry’s biggest players.
ExxonMobil early Friday morning reported a profit of $17.5 billion in the most recent quarter — a jump of 130 percent over the same period last year. Chevron’s $10.4 billion in profits for the quarter reflected a 185 percent leap over last year’s third quarter report.
“We continued to rise to the challenge of meeting global energy needs, drawing on unmatched scale, integration, and technical capabilities,” said a statement from ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods. “Quarter after quarter, the evidence of a stronger business builds. We’re improving both the quality of our portfolio and the ability to optimize around it.”
On Thursday, London-headquartered Shell reported its earnings nearly doubled over the same period last year. All the companies reported their profits from refining had broken records, and their overall earnings are the highest they have been since the energy price surged triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The reports come at an awkward time for Republican candidates, who have for months seen their poll numbers weighed down by an unpopular war in Iran that is driving fuel prices higher. Democrats have seized on the voter anger, placing blame squarely on the White House for launching the war and on GOP officeholders for refusing to demand an end to it.
Polls show that most Americans believe the Iran war, along with President Donald Trump’s tariffs, have stoked inflation.
“This is happening directly because of the decisions the Trump White House and the Republican Congress made,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at Third Way, a left of center think tank. “This is not about uncontrollable vagaries of the market, or actions of OPEC or a rogue state taking actions to increase prices. Prices are up in the U.S. because Donald Trump made decisions that increased them. Voters understand that.”
Gas prices now average $4.23 per gallon nationwide, according to AAA, 39 percent higher than they were before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in an emailed statement that lowering gas prices is a priority for Trump and “once the conflict with Iran comes to an end, gas prices will plummet, and the Iranian terrorist regime will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump has been assuring voters that gas prices would quickly drop since the early days of the war. The average price of gas so far during his second term recently surpassed the average price during the Biden administration, despite the president repeatedly claiming prices were higher under his predecessors.
In August, Trump suggested that oil companies were exploiting the war to raise prices. But the White House has resisted calls for windfall profit taxes and other accountability measures that Democrats have championed to more aggressively regulate the firms when prices surge.
And this week, Trump tried to frame oil company profits as a good thing for voters.
“Your country is making an absolute fortune because of the situation in the Middle East,” he said at a rally in Corpus Christi on Tuesday. “The fake news will say… isn’t it terrible? He forgot about the price at the pump. No. Your price is coming down. But your country is making a fortune and that’s really good, right?”
“I knew that oil would go up,” Trump said. “I actually thought it would go up two to or three times higher, and I was still willing to do it,” he said of attacking Iran. “We couldn’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
The talking points have delighted Democrats, who say few everyday voters are pleased to see oil companies reaping near record profits as they strain to pay for a tank of gas. “Trump just said the quiet part out loud: He doesn’t ‘give a damn’ about higher gas prices, as long as his billionaire friends are making a fortune,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), posted on social media.
Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress released a report this week showing how Trump’s oil and gas stocks have soared amid the war, growing by “as much as $35.8 million” this year, based on the president’s financial disclosures.
The White House said Trump does not control his stock market portfolio, which is managed by third party financial institutions. “All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000,” said a statement from Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman. “Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”
The big oil companies, meanwhile, are making every effort to stay out of the political fray.
Their reports to investors disclosing the profits stress refining margins, capital expenditures and inventory assessments, in narratives written in dry technical language that make no mention of the White House, an electorate enraged by the high costs, or the fast approaching election in which soaring prices at the pump could cost one party control of Congress.
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