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ScheerPost Staff
It’s All About The Oil
As ordinary people paid more at the pump, fossil fuel executives were cashing out.
A new analysis reported by The Wall Street Journal found that oil and gas executives sold off a staggering $1.4 billion in stock as Donald Trump’s war on Iran sent energy markets into chaos and pushed fuel prices higher. The sell-off, involving executives from Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Diamondback Energy, Baker Hughes, and other major firms, reached a 15-year peak. At nearly a dozen companies, the number of executives unloading shares hit or surpassed 10-year records.
The timing is hard to ignore. As war escalated and Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global fossil fuel shipments, oil company share prices jumped. Consumers, meanwhile, were left paying the price. According to 350.org, war-driven spikes in oil and gas prices have already cost consumers and businesses an additional $104.2 billion to $111.6 billion globally. Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee found that Americans alone spent an extra $8.4 billion at gas stations during just the first month of Trump’s war.
VerityData research chief Ben Silverman described the executive stock sales as “opportunistic behavior,” saying there was a “breathlessness” to the rush to cash in. Whether some trades were arranged ahead of time or not, the broader reality remains the same: war once again became a profit engine for an industry that has long thrived on crisis.
Climate journalist Emily Atkin noted that this is not some shocking exception to the rule, but rather a familiar feature of the political economy of war. The costs of war are socialized across millions of households who have to drive to work, heat their homes, and absorb rising prices. The gains, meanwhile, flow upward to a tiny class of corporate executives whose compensation structures are designed to reward exactly this kind of windfall. And those profits do not just sit idle. They are funneled back into political campaigns and lobbying operations devoted to blocking climate action, fighting clean energy, and entrenching a system of permanent extraction and endless war.
Even with a fragile ceasefire now in place between Trump and Iran, the crisis is far from over. Israel’s simultaneous escalation in Lebanon has already raised fears that the truce could collapse entirely. Analysts warn that even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens and open fighting eases, so-called “fossilflation” will continue, with consumers still burdened by volatile prices, damaged infrastructure, and tightened supply.
What this moment reveals is not merely greed, but structure. War inflates profits for fossil fuel giants while working people shoulder the consequences. The same corporate forces that help drive climate catastrophe are also among the first to benefit from geopolitical destruction. The result is a system in which violence abroad becomes economic punishment at home, and the powerful turn global instability into private gain.
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