Oil Price Swings Challenge Big Oil Trading Profits

While analysts and investors largely expect to see lower earnings at the world’s top oil and gas majors for the second quarter, due to weaker oil prices, they have fewer clues about the trading divisions of Big Oil.

Typically, major oil price swings benefit trading desks; however, this past quarter’s wild ride in oil prices was largely driven by geopolitical events and uncertainty surrounding U.S. trade policies.

The average oil price in Q2 was 10% below the average for the first quarter. Oil started April with a 20% plunge due to President Trump’s tariff announcement, before spiking by 30% during the Israel-Iran war, and then erasing the surge, and some more, by the end of June.

Geopolitical factors outside market fundamentals make trading upsides more difficult to capture, Michele Della Vigna, head of natural resources research in Europe, Middle East and Africa at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg.

“Volatility usually is good because it means more trading profits, but because it was led by geopolitical risk it was more difficult to grab,” Della Vigna told Bloomberg in an interview published on Wednesday.

“Not disastrous — but definitely a tougher quarter,” the expert added.

Most international majors have already previewed weaker profits on the back of lower average oil prices for the April to June quarter compared to the first quarter of 2025 and the same quarter of 2024.

Shell and BP also offered a glimpse of their trading businesse, even if none of the five majors – ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies – reports trading profits as a separate item.

BP has said it expects its gas marketing and trading result to be average, but noted that the “The oil trading result is expected to be strong.”

Shell, for its part, expects to have booked “significantly lower” trading and optimization results for the second quarter compared to the prior quarter.

By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com

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