Commodity producing and trading giant Glencore expects to post a profit of $3.3 billion in its marketing division for the first half of the year, as extreme market volatility during the Iran war generated windfall earnings for the energy commodity traders.
Glencore expects to report next week a strong half-year marketing adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of about $3.3 billion in its Marketing segment, which includes oil trading, the company said on Wednesday in its half-year production report.
The trading giant didn’t specify how much energy trading contributed to the profit, but it’s expected to do so in the detailed half-year earnings due out next week.
At any rate, the market volatility of the past five months is putting Glencore’s trading profit on track for its best year ever if energy markets continue to whipsaw in the coming months.
Glencore book its highest ever full-year EBIT in marketing for 2022, the year in which the Russian invasion of Ukraine upended energy flows and markets and sent oil prices soaring to $120 per barrel.
The adjusted EBIT in the marketing division hit a record $6.4 billion in 2022, a surge of 73% from the prior year, “driven primarily by our energy departments successfully navigating the extreme market imbalances, volatility and dislocations across crude oil, LNG, refined products, coal and logistics infrastructure,” Glencore said at the time.
The trader booked adjusted EBIT of $2.9 billion in the marketing segment for the full year 2025.
This year, the first-half earnings alone have already topped the trading profits for the entire 2025.
Apart from trading houses, the integrated oil and gas majors with strong trading divisions have also benefited from the turmoil in energy markets since the start of the war in Iran.
Shell, for example, expects to have booked significantly higher oil and LNG trading results in the second quarter of the year as the Iran war drove extreme volatility in energy commodity markets. Shell reports Q2 earnings on July 30.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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