London (CNN) — “They’re making too much money,” President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. Oil companies — and their colossal profits — were the latest target of his ire.
“I don’t like it. And I should be the last one to say because I’m a big free enterprise guy,” Trump told reporters.
A tumble in energy prices is exactly what Trump needs three months ahead of midterm elections that current polling shows could bring big gains for Democrats in Congress. His war against Iran has sent global oil prices skyward, rippling out into higher costs for American consumers.
But high prices are a boon for oil exporters. On Tuesday, Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest — reported a 33% surge in profit during the second quarter to $33.4 billion from $25.2 billion during the same period last year.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to grapple with an affordability crisis that has seen the average price of a gallon of gas shoot up 37% since the start of the war. It’s tricky optics for a president who, with an eye to November, is in desperate search of a political win.
“Too much money… I’ll say it loud and clear. I’m not happy about it,” he told reporters Monday.
A familiar pattern
Aramco joins a raft of oil majors reporting bumper earnings even as the US-Iran conflict has significantly reduced the flow of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz — making it, at times, all but impossible to export fuel from the region.
On Friday, American oil giant ExxonMobil said its second-quarter profits had more than doubled to $14.5 billion from the same period in 2025. Rival Chevron reported $12.1 billion in profit, more than four times the amount it made during the same period last year.
And, last week, British energy major Shell reported almost $10 billion in profit for the quarter — the second-highest quarterly profit in its history.
Booming profits are part of a familiar pattern: When global supply is constrained, fear and physical scarcity will cause energy prices to rocket and politicians will protest.
In the months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, then President Joe Biden criticized what he called “war profiteering” by energy producers as global oil and natural gas prices soared, and floated the idea of a so-called “windfall tax” on their profits.
The price of a barrel of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was trading a little under $70 before the US-Israeli war with Iran began, but has since climbed to triple digits, fallen sharply, and yo-yoed on any sign of progress or problems in peace talks. On Tuesday morning ET, Brent was trading close to $80 a barrel, up 14% from before the conflict.
Rahul Choudhary, vice president of upstream research at Rystad Energy, said that Aramco’s latest earnings were also boosted by the company’s decision to export more high-value products like diesel.
Still, “high revenue cannot hold forever,” Choudhary told CNN, noting that Aramco’s results were driven by oil sold from stockpiles, which are now lower. Prices, while volatile, also fell back in June after the US and Iran agreed to a since-broken ceasefire.
While Saudi Arabia has found a workaround for a chunk of its oil exports, redirecting barrels west and loading them onto tankers in the Red Sea, this route has become another area of vulnerability.
Last month, Iran-backed Houthi militants declared a blockade on Saudi ships exiting the Bab al-Mandeb strait at the base of the Red Sea and claimed responsibility for attacks on vessels. Saudi crude exports via the Red Sea have at least halved as a result, according to Choudhary.
As long as oil price stay high, oil companies stand to make vast sums of money. That is, of course, if they choose to ignore Trump’s calls to “cut the retail price.”
The-CNN-Wire
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