U.S. oil companies post billions in Q3 profits as crude production hits record level

High gas prices weighed on American voters as they took to the polls on Tuesday. Election results temporarily brought down oil prices earlier this week, but they’ve rebounded a bit as the market reads political tea leaves.

Even so, U.S. oil companies continue to bring in high profits, as more oil and gas earnings come out. American oil giant ConocoPhillips, for example, reported $4 billion in profit, driven in part by high oil prices.

What’s driving the strong growth? Geopolitical conflict that launched global oil market into chaos, for one.

“U.S. oil companies are banking pretty huge third-quarter profits and benefiting from the heightened pricing caused by the ongoing disruption of Middle East crude oil supplies,” said Andy O’Conor at Morningstar DBRS.

The big multinational oil companies with their own refineries are also sitting pretty.

“Refining has been the stand-up performer … and that's really been driven by skyrocketing refining margins of course, given the global disruptions we're seeing with the war in the Middle East, and attacks on Russian refineries,” said Stephen Cunningham with Argus Media.

High oil prices have also spurred some production growth. U.S. crude production hit a record 14 million barrels a day last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“That's, like, a significant milestone even though the talk over the last few months has been off shale plateauing out and a lot of the basins are mature,” Cunningham said.

But one oil basin is going strong. In West Texas, the Permian Basin has been driving that growth in U.S. production.

“It's clear that the price increases of 2026 have incentivized companies in the Permian to try to bring more production to the marketplace to take advantage of those higher prices by adding rigs and doing other things they can to grow production,” said Karr Ingham with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

Still, many companies are cautious. It’s easy to see how crude oil prices per barrel could spike higher or drop lower, depending on what happens geopolitically.

A lot of these companies still sussing out how much they’re comfortable spending in 2027.

“It's pretty easy to get to $100-world, and it's pretty easy to get to a $60-world through some of those scenarios that they're going to look at,” said Garrett Golding with the Dallas Federal Reserve.

Looking ahead, most major companies aren’t writing blank checks for a bunch of new oil rigs.