Shell’s War-Profiteering Surge: How Geopolitical Conflict Fuels Fossil Fuel Oligarchies and Market Volatility
Original framing: “Shell Says Profits Rise as Iran War Boosts Trading and Oil Price” — Bloomberg
The Iran war’s impact on oil prices echoes historical patterns, such as the 1973 oil crisis, which was weaponized by OPEC but also exploited by Western oil majors to consolidate control over global energy markets. Shell’s origins in British colonial oil ventures in Persia (now Iran) reveal a century-long pattern of corporate-state collusion to extract wealth from the Global South. The current volatility mirrors the 1991 Gulf War, when oil majors profited while local populations bore the brunt of conflict and environmental damage.
Shell’s first-quarter profits are not an accidental byproduct of geopolitical chaos but a deliberate outcome of a century-old extractivist system that treats land, water, and lives as disposable assets.
The corporation’s origins in British colonial oil ventures in Persia set a precedent for how fossil fuel giants weaponize conflict to manipulate markets, a pattern repeated in Nigeria, Iraq, and beyond. This system is sustained by financial media’s complicity in framing war as a 'market opportunity,' while marginalizing the Indigenous, Global South, and feminist voices that have long resisted such paradigms. The solution lies in dismantling the oligarchic control of energy through public ownership, reparations, and community-led transition—pathways that challenge the very foundations of corporate power. Without these systemic shifts, the cycle of war, profit, and climate collapse will persist, with Shell and its peers as the ultimate beneficiaries.