The headline: refining profits surged at Exxon and Chevron, and both stocks touched all-time highs.
The counter-fact: Chevron’s U.S. refiners sold 1.304 million barrels of product a day, against 1.303 million a year earlier.
Exxon Mobil’s Energy Products segment, the one that runs its refineries, earned $9.05 billion in adjusted profit in the third quarter, against $3.96 billion in all nine months of 2025. Its fuel sales ran at 5.75 million barrels a day, 4% above the pace of those nine months. That is a price story, not a volume story, and the coverage we read, from CNBC to Bloomberg, reports the records without setting them against the barrels. Our read: this is a scarcity rent, not an operating triumph, and the stocks are priced as if it lasts.
The Barrels Barely Moved
We built the table below from the two companies’ own filings: Exxon’s adjusted segment earnings and fuel sales, and Chevron’s U.S. downstream earnings and refined-product sales.
| Business | Earnings, earlier | Earnings, now | Change | Volume change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exxon Energy Products, nine months of 2025 vs 2026 | $3.96 billion | $15.95 billion | +303% | +3.1% |
| Chevron U.S. downstream, Q3 2025 vs Q3 2026 | $0.64 billion | $3.59 billion | +462% | +0.1% |
Divide Exxon’s third-quarter segment earnings by the fuel it sold, 5.753 million barrels a day over 92 days, or about 529 million barrels, and the segment cleared roughly $17.10 a barrel. The same arithmetic on the first nine months of 2025 gives $2.63. Chevron’s U.S. refiners earned about $29.88 on each of roughly 120 million barrels sold, against $5.32 a year earlier.
One caveat belongs beside the big number. Exxon’s adjusted figure excludes identified items and estimated timing effects, which the filing puts at negative $2.54 billion company-wide for the quarter. The segment’s GAAP earnings, the $7.2 billion CNBC reported, are lower, but still 1.8 times the $4.03 billion it booked on that basis over the nine months of 2025.
Profits Over Production, in Bloomberg’s Words
Bloomberg’s senior U.S. oil reporter Kevin Crowley told Bloomberg Television that the oil majors’ combined earnings of about $56 billion were the third highest on record, behind only two quarters of 2022, and that at 0:52 “it really was all about refining.” Asked about Chevron’s slipping output, he said at 1:44 that the company is “running that business for profits rather than production” in the Permian Basin.
The filings agree. Chevron’s worldwide output fell to 3.98 million barrels of oil equivalent a day from 4.09 million a year earlier, and Exxon’s nine-month production ran 2.5% below the same period of 2025.
Five Cents on the Dollar
Exxon put $481 million of its $7.0 billion in third-quarter capital spending into Energy Products, 6.9% of the total, and $5.98 billion into Upstream. Against $9.05 billion of segment earnings, that is about 5 cents reinvested per dollar earned. In the same quarter it returned $5.1 billion to shareholders in buybacks.
Exxon CEO Darren Woods told CNBC that “refining capacity is very tight today,” and Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said, in the same CNBC piece, “the system is under stress.” Both describe a shortage. Exxon’s refining budget does not look aimed at ending it, which is rational: new capacity compresses the margin that funds the buyback. Our read is that the rent lasts until supply returns from somewhere other than the majors. Wood Mackenzie’s Raphael Portela told CNBC that means Gulf refineries restarting and Russian exports returning, and that the physical tightness “carries well into 2027.”
President Trump said in August that the two companies were making “too much money based on a shortage.” The numbers back the second half of that sentence more than the first. Diesel, which set an all-time U.S. record in September, averaged $6.32 a gallon on Friday, up more than 70% from a year ago. A debate about the size of the profit is aimed at the wrong number. The lever is supply.
What to Watch in the Fourth Quarter
The test is Exxon’s Energy Products earnings per barrel sold: $17.10 in the third quarter, $7.91 in the second, $10.26 on average this year. If it holds near the year’s average while sales stay above 5.7 million barrels a day, the market’s bet on a long squeeze is working. If it slides toward the second-quarter level on unchanged volumes, the shortage is easing, and the all-time highs paid for the peak.