Chevron CEO Cashed Out $104 Million as Trump's Iran War Spiked Oil Prices

The War Profiteers Have Names and Addresses

President Donald Trump told Americans not to worry about oil price spikes from his Iran war. "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far," he posted on Truth Social. "So when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money."

But Trump's "we" doesn't include you. It includes Mike Wirth.

A Wall Street Journal investigation published Wednesday reveals that America's top oil and gas executives have been cashing out at historic rates during the Iran conflict. In the first three months of this year, oil CEOs sold $1.4 billion worth of their own stock -- the fastest selling pace in 15 years. At a dozen companies, the selling broke all-time records.

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth led the pack, selling $104 million worth of shares between January and March. That's four times his entire 2025 reported compensation of $26.8 million. ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance netted $54.3 million in March alone. Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli sold $33 million that same month.

Not All Sales Were Automatic

Many executives claim their stock sales happen through prearranged trading plans -- automated schedules set up weeks or months in advance to avoid accusations of insider trading or market timing. The details of these plans are rarely public, but the idea is simple: if the sale was scheduled before the news broke, the executive can't be accused of profiteering.

Except not all of these sales were prearranged.

The Journal found that $17.2 million of Wirth's March sales had no trading plan attached. That means it was a deliberate, in-the-moment decision to sell while Chevron's stock was riding a wartime spike. Analysts tracking insider transactions flagged similar patterns across the industry -- oil executives making active choices to cash out during the war rather than following automatic schedules.

"Trump's Mar-a-Lago friends seem to be making a killing off of Trump's killing," said Lukas Shankar-Ross, deputy director of climate and energy justice at Friends of the Earth. He's referring to Trump's infamous dinner with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago last year, where Trump reportedly told them he would give them everything they wanted in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations.

A Pattern, Not an Accident

This isn't the first time oil CEOs used war to get richer. In the weeks after President Joe Biden said he was "convinced" Russia would invade Ukraine in 2022, Big Oil CEOs sold almost $99 million worth of shares, according to an analysis by Friends of the Earth and BailoutWatch.

What makes this story remarkable isn't simply that oil executives profited from war. It's how perfectly legal and normal it all is, and what that legality reveals about who wins and who loses when America goes to war.

When America goes to war, the costs are distributed broadly -- onto every American who drives a car or heats a home. The benefits are distributed narrowly, flowing to a small group of men whose compensation is designed to capture exactly this kind of windfall.

Where the Money Goes Next

The cash windfall these oil executives make from war won't go primarily toward yachts and private jets. They already have those. It will go toward political campaigns and lobbying organizations dedicated to fighting climate regulation, blocking clean energy policy, and fueling authoritarianism.

This cycle is a major reason the United States has failed, for decades, to mount a serious response to climate change.

Meanwhile, a new analysis from the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition finds that the largest U.S. oil and gas companies continue to pay significantly more in taxes abroad than in the United States. ExxonMobil paid nine times as much tax to foreign countries as it did to the U.S. federal government, where its effective tax rate was just 2.6 percent. For Chevron, just 2 percent of its total global tax dollars went to the U.S. federal government.

The three American oil super majors expect to pay an average of just 6.1 percent in federal tax on their domestic income from 2025 -- far below the official corporate rate of 21 percent.

One Executive's Honesty

In a recent survey of more than 100 oil and gas executives asked about the Iran war, one anonymous respondent said something remarkably honest: "I don't like profiting from a war. I didn't choose this, and it feels awful."

We have no idea who said it. But one thing is certain: it probably wasn't Mike Wirth.

The International Energy Agency says the oil and gas crisis from the Iran war is worse than 1973, 1979, and 2022 combined. As Trump's deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz approached, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told Le Figaro that the impact on the oil market was larger than the combined force of the twin shocks of the 1970s and the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The prospect of a cease-fire drove oil prices and energy stocks lower Wednesday as traders anticipated at least a temporary respite. But the damage is done. The executives already cashed out. And when the next war comes, they'll do it again.