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,........

© Forbes