The Hormuz blockade drained inventories, causing shortages of jet fuel and spiking gasoline prices in San Diego.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
What a frustrating time to be a giant oil and gas company. Somehow, despite President Donald Trump’s war against Iran bringing about the greatest oil supply shock of all time, trapping 10% of global supply behind the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices topped out at only $111 per barrel in early April.
Sure this was double the price of oil at the beginning of 2026, just before Trump deposed Venezuela’s petro-tyrant Nicolas Maduro. But it didn’t even come close to reaching 2008’s nominal record of $147 a barrel ($230 in today’s money). With Hormuz set to reopen fully, spot oil has fallen back below $80, barely high enough to incentivize America’s frackers to accelerate drilling. The number of rigs currently drilling in North America is up just 7% in a year to 740.
The energy chaos of 2026 is already making its mark on the rankings of the Forbes Global 2000, mostly in a good way. The world’s biggest energy concerns still top the list — Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, PetroChina, Shell, Chevron and Total.
There’s more action further down the rankings:
– BP advanced 314 spots to rank no. 107. Profits are way up, to $15 billion in the past four quarters. That’s more than double the previous year when Britain’s oil giant had to take $8.9 billion in charges against income to write down the impaired value of oil and gas reserves that had become uneconomic to develop at low commodity prices. Worse was the 2022 writedown of $24 billion — the abandoned value of BP’s JV with Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. New boss Meg O’Neill, the third CEO in as many years, joined BP in April from Australia’s Woodside Energy and promptly arranged the firing of overbearing Chairman Albert Manifold. She’ll get to take credit for BP’s biggest new projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad, Australia and Azerbaijan, and to keep paying down debt. Though down from highs, BP shares are up 27% this year.
– Valero Energy, America’s biggest independent oil refiner, is up 170 spots this year to no. 227, on the strength of profits quadrupling in the past four quarters to $4.2 billion. Valero’s highly complex refineries on the Gulf Coast have already ramped up purchases of cheaper, heavy crude from Venezuela and boosted fuel exports in the wake of shortages. The San Antonio-based company’s previous year’s results had been hurt by a $1.1 billion write off of its two now shuttered California refineries.
– Repsol, the Spanish oil company advanced 135 spots to no. 331, largely on 12-month profits up 50% to $2.9 billion, with first quarter 2026 net income up 57%. Repsol has been on an exploration tear in unlikely Alaska where it is a 49% owner of the Pikka field, expected to produce 80,000 barrels per day. Other Alaska finds include a big discovery called Quokka. Repsol has 40 more exploration blocks in Alaska. It also has a legacy position in Venezuela where it produces 15,000 bpd with lots of potential upside.
– Canadian oil sands developer Cenovus Energy is up 127 spots to no. 333, with profits up 50% to $3.3 billion. Shares have doubled in the past year on the integration of acquisition MEG Energy. Cenovus’s three oil sands extraction projects in Alberta are entirely underground, using injected steam to melt the oil out of the earth. Growth is limited by pipeline capacity, which is expanding. Analyst Lloyd Byrne at Jefferies likes that Cenovus only greenlights projects that would still be profitable at $45 oil.
On the natural gas side, current spot prices around $3.20 per mmBtu are more than double the nadir in late 2024, which caused many producers to stop drilling and shut in wells. Demand is surging. “Natural gas is emerging as a broader growth story beyond LNG, with rising power demand from AI, datacenters and manufacturing reshoring,” says Bryce Erickson at Mercer Capital. “Strategic buyers continue to compete aggressively for premium assets.”
– Venture Global, America’s fastest growing liquefied natural gas exporter, cofounded by billionaires Mike Sabel and Bob Pender, advanced 370 spots to no. 500 as profits expanded from $1.7 billion to $2.8 billion in the past four quarters. With Qatar’s LNG knocked out and prices at a premium, Venture Global has maximized output from its Calcasieu Pass LNG, and Plaquemines LNG megaprojects, with more in the works.
– Pittsburgh-based EQT, the nation’s second-biggest natural gas producer with 28 trillion cubic feet of reserves was up 529 spots in the ranking to no. 642 on profits exploding eight-fold to $3.3 billion in the past 12 months. In recent years CEO Toby Rice has acquired assets from Alta Energy, Tug Hill, Chevron, Equitrans and Olympus Energy. Net debt is falling towards $5 billion from $9 billion a couple years ago.
– Expand Energy shot up 686 slots to no. 711 as it reversed a $700 million 2024 loss into $3.3 billion trailing 12-month profits. Expand, formerly known as Chesapeake Energy, exited Chapter 11 in 2021, merged with Southwestern Energy in 2024, and since then doubled output to 7.4 billion cubic feet of gas per day, the biggest in the U.S. Expand is currently seeking a new CEO to focus on improving efficiency while it pays down debt. With ample drilling opportunities, they’re operating 11 rigs, with a focus on the Haynesville shale in Louisiana, close to LNG export terminals.
So who were some of the notable losers in this year’s Global 2000 rankings?
– Occidental Petroleum dropped 80 spots to no. 382. Oxy’s profits were down by half to $1.5 billion in the past year and ebitda is the lowest it’s been in 5 years. Much of that has to do with the effect of selling chemicals division OxyChem at the bottom of the cycle to Berkshire Hathaway last fall for $9.7 billion. Oxy will use the cash to keep paying for its 2024 CrownRock acquisition. Debt is still high at $14 billion but down from $23 billion a year ago. Robert Hodges at TD Securities notes that a perennial headwind for Oxy is the $8 billion chunk of preferred stock held by Berkshire, on which Oxy pays $680 million a year in perpetual dividends. CEO Vickie Hollub retired June 1, replaced by Chief Operating Officer Richard Jackson.
– Diamondback Energy is down 302 spots to no. 773. But why? Ebitda in 2025 grew mightily to $10.3 billion, versus $7.7 billion in 2024, and yet trailing 12-month net income has plunged from $3.2 billion to $279 million. This was due entirely to a non-cash impairment charge that Diamondback took at the end of 2025 to write down the value of previously booked oil reserves that had become uneconomic to drill at at last year’s low oil prices. With that charge out of the way and oil prices on the rise, analyst Neal Dingmann at William Blair sees Diamondback’s earnings per share climbing to $17 in 2026, for a forward p/e of 11. The stock is up 25% in the past year.
Diamondback CEO Kaes Van’t Hof greenlit faster oil development after the Hormuz blockage, directing his field crews to begin completing and hooking up some of their inventory of oil wells drilled months ago when prices were too low to justify turning them on. On a recent investor call Van’t Hof said the move “reflects the view that the market is facing a structural supply shock rather than a temporary imbalance.”
Indeed with U.S. commercial petroleum inventories at “tank bottoms” and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve down to just 340 million barrels, the lowest level since 1983, there’s plenty of pent up demand. Look for Diamondback to rise in the Global 2000 rankings next year.