BP Doubles Profit: Trump's Anger Won't Cut the Price

A truck driver refuelling outside Marseille is paying more per litre than at any point since 2022. A family in Valletta watching their electricity bill creep upward has the same question everyone has: who is making money from this, and why can't anyone stop them? The answer arrived in two quarterly results that landed within hours of each other, and the numbers are not subtle.

BP's profit more than doubled. Saudi Aramco posted a 33% jump in second-quarter earnings. The mechanism is straightforward and brutal: the Iran war has constricted global oil supply at precisely the moment demand remained sticky. Less crude moving through the Strait of Hormuz means higher prices at the wellhead, which means higher margins for every producer sitting outside the conflict zone. BP and Aramco are not causing the war. They are, however, the primary financial beneficiaries of it.

Donald Trump's response — publicly blasting Big Oil for making "too much money" — is theatrically satisfying and structurally meaningless. You cannot shame a market. The oil majors are responding to the price signal they were given. If the signal changes, the profits change. Until the supply disruption resolves, the signal will not change. This is not a moral failure. It is a commodity market doing exactly what commodity markets do.

The manufacturing data adds a harder layer. The CNBC purchasing managers survey used a phrase I haven't heard since the post-COVID reopening: conditions "worse than pandemic era." Purchasing managers are not economists — they are the people actually buying inputs, negotiating contracts, managing lead times. When they say inflation feels worse than 2020 and 2021, they mean they cannot price forward, cannot plan, cannot commit. That is the real transmission mechanism from an oil shock to your business. The Federal Reserve, already holding rates higher than most of its models would recommend, is now facing a manufacturing sector where the inflationary pressure is supply-side and geopolitical — precisely the kind it cannot fix with interest rates.

My call: the Fed does not move before September, and when it does, it will be a cut of 25 basis points dressed in enough caveats to leave the market exactly where it started. The two scenarios where I'm wrong — either the Iran situation resolves faster than the diplomatic calendar suggests, or the manufacturing surveys turn so sharply negative that recession fear overtakes inflation fear. Neither looks probable before the third quarter closes.

Flutter Entertainment's migration to New York is worth watching from Malta — the iGaming sector here tracks Flutter's structural decisions closely, and a New York primary listing signals where the capital and the regulatory gravity are shifting. For businesses in Malta holding dollar-denominated contracts or exposed to energy input costs, this is not a week to be complacent about your hedging position. The business banking options available locally have improved — but only for those who are already asking the right questions.

Marcus Azzopardi is Finance & Markets Editor at News Beast by FreeMalta.com.