Aug 8, 2025 Current Resources

U.S. Majors Pump Profits While BP and Shell Stall

Irina Slav

Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

More Info

Premium Content

By Irina Slav - Aug 07, 2025, 5:00 PM CDT

Exxon and Chevron posted strong Q2 oil and gas output, driven by Guyana, Permian, and Kazakhstan.
BP and Shell’s past focus on renewables and asset sales has led to lower oil and gas output, with Shell hitting a 20-year low in production.
While U.S. majors ride out price volatility with strong operations, European giants are rethinking their strategy.

Second-quarter financial reporting season is over and it has revealed two things. First, that Big Oil’s recovery from its energy transition experiment is still ongoing and that European supermajors have yet to catch up with their American sector players—on production and earnings alike.

Exxon and Chevron both reported record oil and gas output for the second quarter despite weaker prices in international markets. For Exxon, the daily average was 4.6 million barrels of oil equivalent, made possible by continued strong growth in Guyana and the acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources. For Chevron, the output number was 3.4 million barrels daily, driven by output hikes in Kazakhstan, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Permian. In the Permian, Chevron hit a production milestone of 1 million bpd even as growth in the most prolific shale play begins to slow down.

Financially, both supermajors booked declines; however, due to prices. For Exxon, the net result was $7.1 billion, down by 8% from the first quarter of the year and 15% from a year earlier. For Chevron, earnings came in at $2.5 billion, down from $4.4 billion a year earlier. Neither company, however, sees this as a problem. For both the period of weaker prices is just business as usual, and it will at some point pass—especially if European Big Oil remains on its current path.

Europe’s top supermajors, BP and Shell, both reported a decline in production for the second quarter of the year. For BP, the daily average was 2.3 million barrels, which was down 3.3% on the year and the result of a reduction in investments in recent years, Reuters’ Ron Bousso noted in an overview of production trends in Big Oil. Shell produced 2.65 million barrels daily in the second quarter, down 4.2% on the year and the lowest in 20 years amid asset sales and investments in alternative energy sources.

Both BP and Shell also reported lower profits compared to a year ago, but exceeded analyst expectations, suggesting they were not doing as badly as many may have assumed. However, they still have work to do to catch up with Exxon and Chevron in terms of operational success, if not market valuation. Interestingly, Reuters’ Bousso suggests they hurry up and ramp up production of oil and gas even as forecasters that Reuters often quotes on general principles predict a peak in both oil and gas demand before the end of this decade, making any production growth plans rather risky.

With production lagging so far behind the rates of the U.S. majors and profits still falling even though it has been three years since the record 2022 performance, Big Oil in Europe needs to rethink its strategy. According to Bousso, asset sales and lower investments in oil and gas growth were to blame for this year’s weaker results. This would suggest that BP’s and Shell’s energy transition experiments have been unsuccessful, as evidenced by both companies’ recent decisions to refocus on the core business instead of pursuing growth in segments that are having a hard time turning a profit.

Once this is established, it should only be a matter of time before growth returns to that core business. A flattening of production outside of OPEC, as forecast by BP, might help by strengthening prices and boosting financial performance even without substantial output growth, which can hardly be achieved so fast. In the meantime, it seems Europe’s supermajors will stick to cost-cutting and shareholder-pleasing with cash returns, which is just as well. When an experiment is unsuccessful, the sooner you drop it, the sooner you can recoup your losses.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com