Exxon, Chevron Or Tankers: Who Hit The Hormuz Jackpot?
Exxon, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies and Equinor cleared $68.69bn, up 73 percent. Teekay's adjusted profit hit a company record. Frontline and DHT report in August.
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A month ago this publication reported that the oil war had cut ExxonMobil to its lowest quarterly profit since the first quarter of 2021, while it handed shareholders $9.2 billion, more than twice what it earned. The same war has just handed Chevron the biggest quarter in its history, past the peak it set when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Nothing about the conflict improved in between. The Strait of Hormuz is still running at roughly a tenth of normal traffic. Lloyd's List Intelligence counted 39 transits in the week to July 26 against 82 the week before and found 70 percent of that traffic untraceable via AIS. What changed is where the money sits inside an oil company.
In the first quarter the disruption took barrels off the majors and handed them nothing back. Chevron made $2.21 billion. ExxonMobil made $4.18 billion. Both ran their refining arms at a loss, Chevron’s downstream $817 million in the red and ExxonMobil’s Energy Products segment $1.26 billion. Three months later Chevron’s downstream earned $4.87 billion and ExxonMobil’s earned $5.47 billion, and the five majors together went from $21.00 billion to $47.69 billion in a single quarter. Nothing was built in between. The shortage simply worked its way downstream, and Eni put the mechanism in its own filing: a standard European refining margin of $8.30 a barrel against $4.80 a year earlier, on middle distillate tightness it attributes to disrupted Middle East flows, Atlantic Basin refinery closures and plant outages together.
What makes that worth stopping on is how little the disruption actually cost them. Chevron’s Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner told the second quarter earnings call that the impact stayed “isolated to the Partitioned Zone, representing about 1% of total second quarter production.” Chevron’s half year profit rose 138 percent.
On the water the same closed door paid the other side. Teekay Tankers posted the highest quarterly adjusted net income in its history, and Kenneth Hvid, its President and Chief Executive Officer, wrote the reason into the release rather than leaving it for analysts to work out. The Baltic Exchange had the Middle East Gulf to China benchmark at almost $474,000 a day on April 17.
Which is where the accounts stop flattering everybody. Roughly a third of the headline profit at Scorpio Tankers, Frontline and DHT Holdings came from selling ships rather than sailing them, which is a decision about the top of a cycle rather than a description of trading. And the cycle did not top. That benchmark fell to $313,000 a day by the final week of June, then climbed back to $423,434 on July 31, within eleven percent of its April high. On the same day Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority declared passage through Hormuz "not possible" and an LNG carrier was struck leaving it. Nine owners have not reported yet. Six of them file between August 4 and August 31, into a market none of these numbers describe.
📋 In This Issue:
⚖️ The Story:
The quarter that reversed, what the majors actually lost, the ships that got paid on the other side and who actually won
📊 By The Numbers:
The scale of the swing and the gains that are not earnings
🔍 Why It Matters:
What changes for the owner, the charterer, the refiner, the equity investor and the underwriter
👀 What To Watch:
Six signals that decide whether the first half was the start or the whole of it
🚨 Gosships Signal:
What both sets of accounts are not telling you
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🔗 Related Coverage
📌 Gosships Data Card
February 28, 2026: United States and Israeli strikes on Iran. Strait of Hormuz transits fall about 70 percent, reaching near zero within days (Clarksons Research; tanker owner filings)
March 27, 2026: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declares the Strait closed to vessels trading to and from United States, Israeli and allied ports (contemporaneous reporting)
April 17, 2026: Baltic Exchange assesses TD3C, Middle East Gulf to China, at WS467.22, a round trip time charter equivalent of almost $474,000 a day, the high of the half. Iran announces the Strait open, then closes it again the following day (Baltic Exchange tanker report, week 16)
June 17, 2026: A United States and Iran memorandum partially reopens the Strait. Between June 18 and July 5, 513 ships transit, about 28 a day against a pre-war baseline near 100 (Al Jazeera, July 9, 2026)
June 26, 2026: TD3C assessed at WS318.89, close to $313,000 a day, down 33 percent week on week (Baltic Exchange tanker report, week 26)
July 8, 2026: The June 17 memorandum collapses. Washington revokes Iran’s oil sales licence on July 7 and the ceasefire is declared over the following day, with strikes resuming within days. Iran describes the memorandum as suspended on July 18 (contemporaneous reporting)
July 21, 2026: Hormuz traffic still down about 90 percent year on year, VLCC transits at nine against 35, nearly 70 percent of tanker transits running dark (Lloyd’s List Intelligence)
July 22 to July 31, 2026: Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil report first half results. The five reporting in dollars post $68.69bn against $39.65bn a year earlier (company results releases)
July 31, 2026: Baltic Exchange assesses TD3C at WS424.33, a round trip time charter equivalent of $423,434 a day, within eleven percent of the April high. Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority declares passage through the Strait “not possible.” The LNG carrier GasLog Shanghai is struck by a projectile while leaving the Strait with Qatari cargo (Baltic Exchange tanker report, week 31; Press TV and IRNA, July 31, 2026; gCaptain and UKMTO, July 31 and August 1, 2026)
Sources: ExxonMobil second quarter 2026 results release, July 31, 2026; Chevron second quarter 2026 earnings release and 2Q 2026 Earnings Conference Call Presentation with Prepared Remarks, July 31, 2026; Shell plc second quarter and half year 2026 unaudited results, July 30, 2026; TotalEnergies second quarter 2026 results, July 23, 2026; Equinor second quarter 2026 results, July 22, 2026; Eni second quarter 2026 results, July 29, 2026; Scorpio Tankers second quarter 2026 results release, July 30, 2026; Teekay Tankers second quarter 2026 earnings release, July 30, 2026; Frontline first quarter 2026 results, May 22, 2026; DHT Holdings first quarter 2026 results, May 5, 2026 and business update, July 13, 2026; Okeanis Eco Tankers first quarter 2026 results, May 13, 2026; Baltic Exchange tanker reports, weeks 15, 16, 26, 30 and 31, 2026; Clarksons Research H1 2026 Shipping Market Review, July 7, 2026; Lloyd's List Intelligence Strait of Hormuz briefs, July 21 and July 29, 2026; Press TV and IRNA, July 31, 2026; gCaptain and UKMTO on the GasLog Shanghai, July 31 and August 1, 2026; Lloyd’s Register tanker market commentary, 2026; Kpler transit data via The National, August 1, 2026; Bloomberg oil market report, July 31, 2026; BP financial calendar and ConocoPhillips reporting advisory, 2026.
⚖️ The Story
An oil company and a shipowner should not be able to have their best quarter at the same time. One buys freight and the other sells it. Both just did, and that is the thing worth explaining.
The Quarter That Reversed
Five integrated oil majors reporting in dollars posted $68.69 billion of net income attributable to shareholders in the first half of 2026, against $39.65 billion in the first half of 2025. Every figure is a half year total stated by the company itself, not a sum of quarters assembled by anyone else.
Split that half into quarters and the shape changes completely. Those same five made $21.00 billion in the first quarter and $47.69 billion in the second. The half was not a climb. It was a collapse followed by a record, and the reversal inside three months is what the totals hide.
Chevron made $2.21 billion in the first quarter and $12.07 billion in the second, a factor of 5.5 and the largest quarter in the company's history. ExxonMobil went from $4.18 billion to $14.53 billion, a factor of 3.5. Shell nearly doubled and Equinor rose by more than half. Only TotalEnergies moved the other way on a reported basis, down 6.4 percent quarter on quarter, though its adjusted net income rose 11.7 percent.
This publication reported on June 30 that the oil war had pushed ExxonMobil to its lowest quarterly profit since the first quarter of 2021 while it distributed $9.2 billion to shareholders, $4.3 billion in dividends and $4.9 billion in buybacks, against $4.18 billion earned. That report was accurate. What has happened since is that the identical conflict, with nothing in the fundamentals improved, produced the opposite result.
The Ranking By Size Inverts The Ranking By Improvement
