Rubbish Check
Guardian Business · 4 August 2026 source

“Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis”

R4/ 10
Selective
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Guardian's claim that eight oil majors made "$93bn profits amid war and climate crisis" a 4/10 because the profit figures check out against company earnings reports, but the headline yokes a war-driven price windfall to an unrelated climate-crisis death toll to sharpen the moral indictment.
The Verdict
Selective. The $93bn figure and individual company results are accurate and independently verifiable, so this isn't fabrication. But the headline's "amid war and climate crisis" construction implies a single culpable story when the two clauses describe different mechanisms: war drove the price spike that inflated profits, while the climate-crisis heatwave toll is a longer-run consequence of cumulative emissions, not this quarter's earnings. Bundling them for effect is a framing choice, not a fact.

What actually happened

Guardian analysis found eight listed oil majors (Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron, ExxonMobil) reported combined quarterly profits of $93bn for April to June 2026, roughly double the same period last year. Guardian analysis found that the eight listed oil producers made almost $93bn in the three months to the end of June, the first full financial quarter after the US-Israeli war on Iran triggered a surge in global oil prices to highs above $126 a barrel. The quarter also coincided with severe global heatwaves, which climate scientists have linked to fossil-fuel emissions in general, though not to this specific quarter's corporate earnings.

Key facts

  • The eight companies almost doubled their combined profits from just under $50bn in the same period last year.
  • Saudi Aramco reported the biggest gain: a 34% increase in quarterly net income to more than $33bn, even as its infrastructure was damaged by drone and missile strikes.
  • BP reported quarterly profits of $5.73bn, the highest since the first year of Russia's war on Ukraine and more than double the $2.5bn of the previous quarter, independently confirmed by BP's own results release.
  • Shell reported its second highest quarterly profits ever at $9.84bn, despite producing less gas from its Qatar plant due to war damage.
  • Chevron reported net income of $12.2bn, a more than fivefold increase, and ExxonMobil reported $14.5bn, double the year-earlier figure and its highest since 2022.

What to watch for

  • Watch whether next quarter's profits fall back as the Iran-driven price spike unwinds, which would confirm this was a war windfall rather than a structural shift.
  • Watch how outlets frame BP's simultaneous sell-off of green assets (biogas, solar, North Sea) alongside record profit; that's a genuine editorial choice worth scrutinising, separate from the headline's war/climate pairing.
  • Watch for company rebuttals on the climate-attribution framing, since BP's chief executive defended the profits by saying the company was focused on reliably producing more of the oil products that were in short supply.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
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