The calculus could not be more simple: if it’s bad for humanity, it’s good for the oil industry. This year, after the US and Israel started a war with Iran and caused one of the most serious supply disruptions in the history of the oil market, many of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies recorded massive increases in profits.

In August, the Guardian published a report detailing the huge windfalls enjoyed by major oil companies as a result of the conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In the spring quarter of this year, the first full financial quarter after the war began, eight of the largest companies in the sector – among them BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and the state-owned Saudi energy giant Aramco – almost doubled their combined profits compared to the same period last year. Throughout that quarter, these companies made some $93 billion in profit, or almost $700,000 (€620,000) every single minute.

Aramco recorded the largest increase in profits, a 34 per cent leap above the same period last year, despite the damage caused to its infrastructure by Iranian and Houthi missile strikes. According to the group Carbon Majors, which traces emissions to the organisations and states that produced the fuels, Aramco is allegedly responsible for more carbon emissions than any company in history.

It’s worth recalling what else was happening in the world while such gigantic war profits were being raked in by these companies and their shareholders. There were successive extreme heatwaves across Europe, with temperature records broken in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom, and some 36,000 excess deaths during the heatwaves.

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