BP reported $3.2bn in profit for the first three months of the year — more than double the $1.38bn it earned a year earlier — and its new chief executive, Meg O'Neill, tied the jump to a surge in oil prices since the Iran war began.
The size of the move was driven by BP's customers and products arm, which returned $2.5bn in the quarter after contributing just $103m in the same period last year. The company said volatile oil markets pushed Brent crude from about $73 a barrel before the conflict to nearly $120 a barrel at one point, later slipping below $100 amid speculation about when the Strait of Hormuz would reopen; Brent was around $110 a barrel at the time of the report.
BP's shares rose 3% on Tuesday, leaving the stock about 20% higher since the Iran war began. The company warned, however, that production between April and June is expected to be lower partly because of disruption in the Middle East, signalling the boost to earnings may be temporary.
O'Neill framed the results against an operating landscape she described as unusually complex. "at a time when our industry is operating in an environment of conflict and complexity," she said, BP is "working with customers and governments to get fuel where it's needed, helping minimize disruption." These are the first quarterly results under her leadership.
The numbers have particular political resonance in the United Kingdom because of the Energy Profits Levy, the windfall tax introduced in 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The levy — which Labour has extended to March 2030 — applies only to profits from extracting oil and gas in the UK, while most energy giants, including BP, make the bulk of their earnings overseas.
That distinction helps explain why the government faces pressure even as BP posts large headline profits. Labour's Rachel Reeves said the levy was designed "exactly why we extended the Energy Profits Levy to make sure that windfall profits could be taxed appropriately," and argued that the sector must be treated "properly." Reeves also noted that "BP and other oil and gas companies play a really important part in our energy mix."
The mechanics behind the numbers are plain in BP's segment results. The leap in the customers and products division — from $103m to $2.5bn — mirrors the jump in wholesale and retail margins that follow big swings in crude prices. Brent's move from roughly $73 to almost $120 a barrel at the height of the disruption amplified trading and downstream earnings; the later fall back toward $110 and below $100 reduced some of that pressure but left first-quarter results already set.
The broader market implication is tied to the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint that normally carries about 20% of global supplies of oil and liquid natural gas. When the waterway was effectively closed at the start of the conflict, markets priced in the possibility of a prolonged shortfall; some of that premium remains, and BP's statement links its higher profits directly to that volatility.
The tension in the story is fiscal: the Energy Profits Levy captures domestic extraction gains, but not the overseas trading and refining profits that made up the bulk of BP's headline numbers. That gap leaves a clear policy question without an answer in the results themselves — a company can report jumped earnings driven by global price swings while the levy raises receipts only from a fraction of those gains.
Which brings the central question into focus: with most of BP's earnings generated overseas and volatile global prices still in play, will policymakers move to change the scope of the levy to capture such windfall profits? The figures suggest the Treasury's current tool will not automatically reach the bulk of gains from bp profits iran war, leaving government choices on taxation and the political fallout the most consequential issue to watch next.
