Shell reported adjusted earnings of $9.84 billion for the April to June period, more than double the roughly $4.26 billion it posted a year earlier, as the US-Israel war with Iran disrupted global oil supplies and sent crude prices sharply higher. The result comfortably beat analyst expectations of around $8.79 billion and marked the company’s strongest quarterly profit since the second quarter of 2022, when energy prices spiked following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Brent crude, which traded around $73 a barrel before the conflict began, jumped as high as $114 a barrel in early May at the height of the fighting, driven in large part by fears over Iran’s ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. Prices have swung sharply since, at times exceeding $120 a barrel before falling back below $100 as ceasefire hopes rose and fell.
Shell chief executive Wael Sawan said the company’s operational performance had enabled very strong results despite severe disruption across global energy markets. Much of the profit boost came from Shell’s trading arm, which benefited from the wide and volatile swings between buying and selling prices for oil and gas during the conflict, a dynamic that tends to favor large integrated energy traders even as production is disrupted.
The war took a direct toll on Shell’s output. The company reported a sharp drop in production during the quarter, with gas output falling to 631,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 909,000 in the first quarter. Total oil and gas production for the first half of the year was down 16 percent compared with the same period in 2025. Shell’s liquefied natural gas operations in Qatar were shut for weeks amid the fighting, and its Pearl gas-to-liquids facility there sustained damage after being struck during the conflict, according to reporting on the company’s operations in the region.
The results drew criticism from environmental campaigners, who argued the record profits were being generated directly from an energy crisis that has pushed up household bills across Europe and beyond. Friends of the Earth said the earnings were built on the back of a war that has left ordinary households struggling to pay for fuel and electricity, and called for windfall taxes on energy companies benefiting from the price spike.
The scale of the profit rebound underscores how geopolitical shocks in the Middle East continue to reshape global energy markets years after the disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine. Analysts have noted the parallel between the two crises, both of which delivered outsized trading profits to major oil companies even as underlying physical production faced disruption.
Shell’s results add to a broader pattern among the oil majors this earnings season, with several competitors also reporting stronger than expected quarterly numbers tied to the same volatility in Middle Eastern energy markets.
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