HOUSTON, Texas — The two biggest U.S. oil companies said Friday that their refineries, not their oil fields, did much of the heavy lifting in a quarter of soaring profits, as diesel prices stayed high and overseas buyers leaned on Gulf Coast fuel.
Exxon Mobil posted a third-quarter profit of $15.4 billion, which works out to $3.72 per share and is roughly twice the $7.5 billion it earned a year before. Stripping out one-time items, the company made $17.5 billion, or $4.23 a share. Operating cash flow came to $25.7 billion.
Exxon said its U.S. Gulf Coast refineries ran crude units at full utilization during the quarter. Its fuels business earned about $7.2 billion, slightly more than its oil and gas production arm, and its refining profits for the first nine months of the year are close to triple last year’s pace.
Chevron’s net income climbed to $9.9 billion, up from $3.5 billion a year earlier, with per-share profit at $5.06. Its refining unit made about $4.9 billion, up from $1.1 billion, while U.S. plants handled a record of just over 1 million barrels of crude a day at about 98% of capacity. Chevron’s overall oil and gas output dipped to about 3.9 million barrels a day, with the drop coming overseas.
Both companies beat analyst forecasts on earnings and revenue, and both stocks reached record highs during Friday trading.
Diesel is the pressure point. Attacks on refineries in Russia and the Middle East have removed millions of barrels a day of global processing capacity, and AAA put the national diesel average at $6.32 a gallon Friday, more than 70% above a year ago.
The results land amid political heat. President Trump said in August that the two companies were earning too much because of the shortage. Exxon also set its 2027 share buyback plan at $20 billion and will pay shareholders $1.07 a share as its fourth-quarter dividend.
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