Oil Earnings: Exxon Profit Doubles to $15.4 Billion and Chevron’s Nearly Triples as Diesel Crunch Lifts Refiners

Economic Warfare & Trade Policy › Energy & commodities

Oil earnings from the two biggest U.S. energy companies came in far above forecasts on Friday, Oct. 30, as ExxonMobil and Chevron cashed in on a global diesel shortage. ExxonMobil said third-quarter profit doubled to $15.4 billion, while Chevron’s nearly tripled to $9.9 billion, and both stocks touched all-time highs during Friday trading, CNBC reported.

The driver was refining. With attacks by Ukraine, Iran and Houthi militants knocking refineries in Russia and the Middle East offline, importers have turned to U.S. Gulf Coast plants for diesel, and the two companies ran those plants close to flat out.

What ExxonMobil and Chevron reported

ExxonMobil reported third-quarter earnings of $15.4 billion, or $3.72 a share, compared with $7.5 billion, or $1.76 a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, it earned $17.5 billion, or $4.23 a share, ahead of the $4.08 analysts expected, according to LSEG figures cited by CNBC. Revenue was $113.2 billion against a $103.1 billion estimate. The company generated $25.7 billion of operating cash flow and $19.1 billion of free cash flow, and returned $9.4 billion to shareholders: $4.3 billion in dividends and $5.1 billion in buybacks. It also announced $20 billion of share repurchases for 2027 and declared a fourth-quarter dividend of $1.07 a share, payable Dec. 10.

Chevron reported earnings of $9.9 billion, or $5.06 a share, up from $3.5 billion, or $1.82 a share, in the third quarter of 2025. Adjusted earnings were $10.4 billion, or $5.28 a share, beating the $4.89 Wall Street expected. Revenue came in at $67.8 billion against a $61.6 billion forecast. The quarter included a $160 million legal reserve and a $110 million impairment, the company said.

Refining is the profit engine

Chevron’s refining division earned $4.9 billion in the quarter, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier, CNBC reported. The company said its U.S. refineries processed record volumes of crude, just above 1 million barrels a day, running at 98% of capacity, and CEO Mike Wirth told CNBC that diesel and jet fuel yields rose more than 10%. “The system is under stress,” Wirth said. “We remain in an environment that is fairly fragile.”

At ExxonMobil, refining generated about $7.2 billion in the quarter, slightly more than its oil and gas production business, according to CNBC. The company said its U.S. Gulf Coast refineries ran at 100% crude unit utilization and posted their second-highest diesel output on record. CEO Darren Woods credited investments such as the Beaumont, Texas, refinery expansion, which he said helped lift distillate production by about 40% since 2019. “Refining capacity is very tight today,” Woods told CNBC. “Frankly, diesel is the key crunch point here.”

By the numbers: how big the jump is

By The Boston Report’s calculations from the companies’ results, ExxonMobil’s quarterly profit rose about 105% from a year earlier, and Chevron’s rose about 183%. Together, the two companies earned $25.3 billion in the quarter, up from $11.0 billion, an increase of roughly 130%. Both beat revenue forecasts by about 10%: Exxon by $10.1 billion and Chevron by $6.2 billion.

Refining stands out even more. Chevron’s refining profit rose roughly 345% year over year, and ExxonMobil’s refining earnings for the first nine months of 2026 reached $11.4 billion, up about 185% from $4.0 billion in the same period of 2025. ExxonMobil paid out about 49% of its quarterly free cash flow to shareholders.

The flip side shows up at the pump. U.S. diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon on Friday, more than 70% higher than a year ago, according to AAA data cited by CNBC, after hitting a record high in September. Higher diesel prices feed into trucking, farming and heating oil costs, which matters in New England, where many homes still burn heating oil.

Production and what comes next

Higher profits did not come from pumping more oil. Chevron’s oil and gas production slipped to about 3.9 million barrels a day from about 4 million a year earlier, with the decline in its international business tied partly to the Middle East conflict, CNBC reported; its upstream earnings still rose 70% to $5.7 billion on higher prices. ExxonMobil has produced about 4.5 million barrels a day so far this year, down more than 2% from nearly 4.7 million in the first nine months of 2025. In its release, ExxonMobil said it had passed 1 billion cumulative barrels of production at both Guyana and Kearl in Canada and extended its streak of annual dividend increases to 44 years.

The windfall is politically sensitive. President Donald Trump said in August that Chevron and Exxon “were making too much money based on a shortage,” according to CNBC, which noted the supply disruption began in March after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

For investors, the question is how long the refining squeeze lasts. Both chief executives framed the market as tight and fragile rather than permanently changed, and Woods argued that cost cuts of $16.9 billion since 2019 mean the gains are “lasting improvements, not simply the result of favorable prices and margins.” The market’s verdict on Friday was positive: Chevron shares were up nearly 2% and Exxon more than 1% during the session, CNBC reported.

For more on Friday’s market moves, see our Oct. 30 business report on Intel’s plunge and the oil giants’ records, our earlier look at how refiners are cashing in as Russian diesel sails for the U.S., and our coverage of Intel stock’s worst day since 1974.

Sources

• CNBC: Chevron and Exxon hit all-time highs as refining profits soar (Oct. 30, 2026)
• ExxonMobil: Third-quarter 2026 results
• Chevron: Third-quarter 2026 results