LONDON — Shell and TotalEnergies reported sharply higher third-quarter profits on Thursday and raised shareholder payouts, as war-driven energy prices and record refining margins pushed both oil majors to their strongest quarterly earnings since 2022, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters via LSE
Shell posted third-quarter net profit of $10.81 billion — yaani about 1,081 crore US dollars in a single quarter — above the $10.33 billion average analyst estimate and almost double the $5.43 billion it earned a year earlier. It raised its quarterly share buyback to $5 billion from $3 billion, its second-largest buyback on record behind the $6 billion programme of 2022. Shell's shares rose 3.2% in early trade.
TotalEnergies reported adjusted net income of $9.1 billion for the July-to-September quarter, more than double the $4.0 billion of a year earlier and above the expected $8.3 billion. Total reiterated plans to buy back $2.5 billion of shares in the fourth quarter and said it would buy back another $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2027. Its shares rose 1.8%.
Record refining margins, war-driven prices
Refining margins nearly quadrupled for both companies compared with a year ago, reaching $42 a barrel at Shell and $33.2 a barrel at TotalEnergies. Reuters noted that the shareholder distributions show how the oil majors are spending profits generated by the US-Israeli war with Iran, now in its ninth month, which has disrupted global energy supplies, driven inflation for customers worldwide and raised input costs for industry.
Shell beat expectations across its segments: integrated gas earned $3.04 billion, upstream earned $3.19 billion, and cash flow from operations excluding working capital rose to $21.7 billion from $12.24 billion a year earlier. Total's refining and chemicals division posted record net income of $3.6 billion — more than five times a year earlier — and its LNG unit income rose to $1.9 billion, while its gearing fell to 9.1%.
The war also cut into Shell's production. Its oil and gas output fell 17% in the first nine months of 2026, mainly because the Middle East conflict reduced volumes from Qatar, while LNG liquefaction volumes rose 12% on the ramp-up of LNG Canada. Shell halted production at its Pearl gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar in March after an attack on Ras Laffan Industrial City damaged one of its two trains; it has restarted the plant at reduced output and says repairs could take about a year.
War-driven energy profits at the oil majors are the other side of the fuel, gas and inflation bills that Punjabi and Indian workers in the Gulf, Canada and Europe are paying. Record refining margins mean the price shock is being captured at the refinery gate — and, as these results show, returned to shareholders through buybacks worth billions of dollars.
BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil report their results on Friday, Reuters said, and Austria's OMV also reported its highest quarterly operating profit since 2022 on Thursday.