While most Americans make trade-offs to afford the high price of gas, one major energy brand is celebrating a staggering earnings report.
Shell reported $9.8 billion in profits from April to June, according to the company’s most recent shareholders report, more than double the $4.3B the oil giant generated during the same quarter in 2025.
Over the same period this year, U.S. gas prices climbed to multi-year highs and hammered consumers’ wallets for $59 billion in increased fuel costs.
Criticism erupted across social media, with many users appalled by the booming profits.
“So the average consumer is struggling day to day, being squeezed by pump prices going up due to the Iran war supposedly reducing supply, and yet one oil company shows record profits and we're supposed to just sit by and do nothing,” Reddit user HardAtWorkISwear posted in a thread Thursday morning. “We aren't angry enough about this [stuff].”
On X, dozens of users voiced frustration over the dichotomy of consumer struggles and oil company profits.
“When wars make oil companies richer, something’s seriously messed up in the world,” one X user posted Thursday.
While one in four consumers was putting off car maintenance to afford gas, oil companies took home more than $30 million every hour in the first month of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, according to a May analysis by research firm Global Witness.
"As lives are destroyed through war and people everywhere fear rising bills, it’s galling to see oil giants like Shell raking in obscene amounts of money,” Patrick Galley, head of news investigations at energy industry watchdog Global Witness, said in a statement.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has been outspoken about oil companies’ soaring profits during the Iran war.
“As the world burns from unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires, Trump's friends in Big Oil are cashing in on his endless war in Iran,” Sanders posted on X Wednesday.
Amid the outcry over U.S. gas prices - all states averaged at least $4 a gallon for the first time in years heading into Memorial Day weekend - President Donald Trump has done little to alleviate consumers’ frustrations.
Trump told White House reporters in May that his concern was Iran’s nuclear weapons, not the affordability challenges Americans were facing. In March, the president was indifferent about the prospect of rising gas prices, saying “if they rise, they rise,” during an interview with Reuters.
Gas prices played a key role in pushing the country’s inflation rate from a modest 2.4 percent in February to 4.2 percent in May.
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