Five oil majors per second: $45,128 in, and very different amounts kept

Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron reported $1,423.1 billion of revenue between them for 2025. Spread across the 31,536,000 seconds of a year, that is $45,128 a second. How much of it each company kept varies more than in almost any other group of companies on this site — from about 21 cents on the dollar to almost nothing.

Revenue per second

Aramco is first, with $445.654 billion of revenue and other income related to sales — $14,132 a second, second only to Amazon among the companies on this site, and more than Apple, whose $416.2 billion for its 2025 fiscal year comes to $13,196 a second.

ExxonMobil follows with total revenues and other income of $332.238 billion, $10,535 a second, and Shell with $266.886 billion, $8,463 a second. BP and Chevron are almost level: BP's sales and other operating revenues were $189.335 billion, $6,004 a second, and Chevron's total revenues and other income $189.031 billion, $5,994 a second. Those are not quite the same income-statement line, which is worth remembering whenever two oil companies are compared on "revenue".

Profit per second

Aramco's net income was $93.389 billion, or $2,961 a second. ExxonMobil earned $28.844 billion, $915 a second; Shell's income attributable to shareholders was $17.837 billion, $566 a second; Chevron's net income $12.299 billion, $390 a second. Aramco's profit alone was larger than the other four companies' combined.

BP is the outlier. Its profit attributable to BP shareholders for 2025 was $55 million — $1.74 a second, less than a fifth of the $9.51 a second that Forbes' $300 million estimate implies for Cristiano Ronaldo. The comparison is mischievous, since his figure is before tax and BP's after, but it makes the point. BP's own preferred measure, underlying replacement cost profit, was $7.5 billion; the difference is items the company treats as outside its underlying performance, such as write-downs and the effect of oil price moves on the value of inventory.

Why profit moved further than revenue

Oil and gas prices were weaker in 2025 than in 2024, and revenue followed them down: Aramco's fell by about 7% and Shell's by about 6%, while BP's was essentially flat. Profit fell much further. ExxonMobil's net income was about 14% lower than in 2024 and Chevron's about 30% lower.

The reason is that most of an oil company's costs do not fall when the price does. Wells, platforms, refineries, pipelines and staff cost roughly the same whatever a barrel sells for, so a fall in price comes largely out of the margin. The same leverage works in reverse when prices rise, which is why oil company profits swing between years far more than their revenue.

It also explains Aramco's position. Saudi fields are among the cheapest in the world to produce from, so a larger share of each barrel's price survives as profit — about 21 cents on the dollar in 2025, against about 9 at ExxonMobil, and between 6 and 7 at Shell and Chevron.

What the counters show

Each oil company page on this site shows revenue, taken from the line of the filing its citation names, and divided evenly across the year. That makes the counters a measure of how much money flows through each company, which for oil companies mostly reflects the price of what they sell. For Aramco, $14,132 a second in becomes about $2,961 kept; for BP, $6,004 in became $1.74 for its shareholders.

To check any figure, each source link goes to the company's annual results or its filing on SEC EDGAR, where revenue and profit appear in the consolidated income statement. An earlier piece on this site explains why the same company can show three different revenue figures in three places.