{"id":727159,"date":"2026-08-04T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/727159\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T12:00:10","slug":"trump-accuses-oil-companies-of-making-too-much-money-from-his-war-on-iran-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/727159\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump accuses oil companies of \u2018making too much money\u2019 from his war on Iran | Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has criticised oil companies for \u201cmaking too much money\u201d from the global energy market disruption caused by his war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Brent crude had been trading at about $70 (\u00a352) a barrel before the first US-Israeli strikes at the end of February, but by the end of April it had soared as high as $126 and is now trading at about $85 a barrel.<\/p>\n

The US president took aim at the windfall profits revealed last week by ExxonMobil<\/a> and Chevron, and said the companies would \u201cgive some of that back to the public\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re making too much money based on a shortage,\u201d he told reporters at the White House on Monday evening. \u201cI don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was speaking just hours before BP reported its profits had doubled in the last quarter<\/a>, to $5.7bn.<\/p>\n

The US oil companies made profits totalling more than $26bn for the three months to the end of June by taking advantage of the energy market disruption triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Chevron reported its highest ever quarterly profit of $12.2bn, a fivefold increase on the same period last year. ExxonMobil reported a profit of $14.5bn in the second quarter, double what it made in the same period a year ago and its highest quarterly profit since Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cChevron: too much money. ExxonMobil: too much money,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to give some of that back to the public and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about Trump\u2019s comments, the BP chief executive, Meg O\u2019Neill, told CNBC that she understood the pressures on households. \u201cThe reality is, we produce a global commodity, and the product we sell hangs off that global commodity price,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Climate campaigners have also attacked big oil\u2019s bumper quarterly earnings, condemning them as \u201cobscene\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cl\u00e9mence Dubois, a campaigns director at 350.org, an international environmental group, said: \u201cChevron and Exxon are profiteering from a model of distraction, leaving ordinary people to pay the price with higher bills and devastating impacts such as these fires. These profits feel almost criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump criticised oil company profits weeks after warning energy retailers to cut their prices as he nears the November midterm elections with flagging approval ratings. He also ordered the US justice department to investigate potential price gouging in the retail energy sector.<\/p>\n

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\u201cGasoline Retailers must get \u200btheir Prices down, IMMEDIATELY,\u201d he wrote on his Truth \u200bSocial platform in late June. \u201cIf Retailers don\u2019t do this, big problems lie \u200bahead!\u201d<\/p>\n

The president told journalists that the fall in oil and gas prices during the administration\u2019s June peace talks with Iran should have caused petrol prices to fall to $2.25 a gallon.<\/p>\n

\u201cOil prices have come down so much and we are not seeing anything at the pump by comparison the way they should be,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

US gasoline prices currently average $4.11 a gallon, according to data from the AAA motoring group.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it has no plans to introduce an export ban on oil or petroleum products, but some analysts say this could be revisited if prices at the pump continue to rise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has criticised oil companies for \u201cmaking too much money\u201d from the global energy market disruption caused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-727159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}