Six months since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran, triggering turmoil in world energy markets, the fallout continues to reverberate through many areas of the global economy. While the war has strained many sectors of the economy, it has also been a boon for some industries. Here is a look at some of the key economic winners and losers of the war: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, alongside Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure in Gulf countries, has sent the price of oil soaring since the start of the war.
That has boosted the bottom lines of some of the world’s biggest energy companies. ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in the US, reported $14.5bn profit in the second quarter of this year, its best quarterly earnings in four years. Chevron, the second-largest US producer, posted a $12bn profit for the same period, the highest in six years.
France’s TotalEnergies raked in a profit of $6bn in the April-June period, up from $3.6bn last year. British energy giants Shell and BP both more than doubled their earnings year-on-year, with quarterly profits of $9.8bn and $5.73bn, respectively. Saudi Aramco netted $33.4bn profit in the most recent quarter, a one-third increase from 2025.
Some regional producers have been harder hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz than others, however. In August, the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (best known as ADNOC) reported a 52 percent drop in second-quarter profit to $665m from $1.39bn in the same period a year earlier, saying sales had been hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. However, it still beat its expected range of $400m to $600m.
In late July, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided Congress with an estimate putting the cost of the war up to that point at $37.5bn. Hegseth did not provide a breakdown, but various observers have suggested that the true cost is almost certainly far higher. Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, said Hegseth’s estimate appeared to be based on the upfront cost of munitions spent by US forces, neglecting medium- and long-term costs ranging from repairs to damaged military installations to disability payments for wounded soldiers, which could last for decades.
The Trump administration denies this. In the most recent major weapons contract linked to the war, the Pentagon announced on August 17 that it had sealed a $22.9bn agreement with RTX Corporation to ramp up production of Tomahawk cruise missiles used for strikes. The US military has also partnered with arms manufacturers on contracts worth tens of billions of dollars since the start of the war, including a $59bn deal with Lockheed Martin to triple production of Patriot interceptor missiles, which US and Gulf forces have heavily depleted against Iranian missile and drone attacks.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
