President Trump’s bombing campaign against Iran is yielding a windfall for some of America’s top oil executives.
Executives sold stock worth $1.4 billion in the first quarter of the year as the share prices of Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Diamondback Energy and other oil-and-gas companies soared on the back of a historic shock to the world’s crude supplies, according to an analysis of insider-transaction disclosures from analytics firm VerityData.
Some of the sales were prearranged under plans that allow executives to sell stock automatically at specific times or share prices without making in-the-moment decisions that could leave them open to allegations of improper trading. The plans are often set weeks or months in advance, though the specifics are rarely public. Nonetheless, the executives’ timing was auspicious.
Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth sold some $104 million worth of shares between January and March. ConocoPhillips’s Ryan Lance netted about $54.3 million in share sales in March alone. Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of oil-field services company Baker Hughes, sold about $33 million worth of stock that same month.
The sales might prove prescient: The prospect of a cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran drove oil prices and energy stocks lower Wednesday as traders anticipated at least a temporary respite for markets.
Last quarter’s energy-sector insider sales reflected a mix of trades determined by prearranged trading plans, as well as ad hoc sales. Both give investors insights into executives’ sense of where their sector might be headed.
“It speaks to the opportunistic behavior of everyone involved—it could be opportunistic set months earlier, it could be opportunistic in the moment,” said Ben Silverman, head of research at VerityData.
The sales hit a 15-year peak, with nearly six executives selling for every one that bought shares in the first quarter—well over double the usual ratio, according to VerityData. By contrast, buyers and sellers were roughly matched in the same quarter last year. Insiders bought just $29.5 million in shares in this year’s first quarter.
“There was a breathlessness to the selling, and the message they sent was to cash in now because the ride won’t last forever,” Silverman wrote.
Executives sold at companies in every part of the energy sector, including offshore drillers, refiners and natural-gas exporters. At nearly a dozen companies, the number of executives selling in the quarter reached or surpassed 10-year records, and in some cases set all-time records, VerityData said.
CEOs stood out as big sellers in many cases, VerityData found, with key details suggesting at least some of them had little confidence the rally would last: selling shares not linked to stock-option exercises, switching from buying to selling, harvesting minimal gains on outstanding options and selling at the tail-end of a trading window. Companies typically restrict insider sales shortly before a financial quarter ends.
“These are not routine transactions—they are deviations that signal conviction,” Silverman wrote. If conflict in the Middle East keeps Brent crude prices over $100 a barrel, energy stocks might stay high or rise, he noted. “But insiders are questioning whether current valuations are sustainable.”
Federal forecasters at the Energy Information Administration expect that Brent will average around $70 a barrel by year-end, even after accounting for the war.
Much of the selling for the first quarter began before the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28, when markets enjoyed ample crude supplies and oil prices lingered around $60 a barrel. Few in the industry could have predicted the U.S.-Israel bombing of Iran, and that the same barrels would fetch nearly $120 just a few weeks later.
Jeff Miller, CEO of oil-field services company Halliburton, sold shares in late January under a trading plan at a price of $34.96, giving him a meager 11% return on options with as much as three years to expiration, VerityData found. The stock hit $40.42 in late March.
Chevron’s Wirth made his largest-ever sale on Jan. 5, triggered automatically by a rise in the company’s share price two days after the U.S. removed Venezuela strongman President Nicolás Maduro from office. Chevron is the only active U.S. oil producer in the South American country. Wirth’s sales plan triggered at a share price of about $165 and generated $52.3 million, nearly 44% of his career pretax proceeds. Wirth’s trading plan was set in November 2024.
The rising share price also prompted a sale for the company’s finance chief, Eimear Bonner. She sold shares from exercising options that wouldn’t have expired for another four to nine years, reaping 15% gains.
Then, in March, Wirth sold an additional $51.6 million worth of stock. The bulk of that sale was triggered under a November 2025 plan, securities filings show, but a $17.2 million chunk wasn’t linked to a trading plan.
The sales, which totaled $104 million, are equivalent to roughly four times Wirth’s 2025 reported compensation of $26.8 million. Wirth still owns 68,000 shares in the company, according to FactSet.
Shares of Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company after Exxon Mobil, have climbed more than 50% since Wirth became CEO in February 2018. The stock’s biggest spikes in that time came during the 2022 energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the current global shock; it opened at $191.41 on Wednesday.
Executives at other companies have also raked in millions of dollars thanks to the wild price gyrations. Some of the sales by Lance at ConocoPhillips occurred when his company’s stock price hovered at a near-record high of about $132 in late March. The windfall accounted for about 30% of the share proceeds Lance has collected since May 2009, according to VerityData.
Travis Stice, executive chairman of Permian driller Diamondback, sold $18.1 million in shares on March 6, his largest sale ever, VerityData said. Baker Hughes’s Simonelli made the $33 million sale as part of a predetermined trade that was put into place in November 2025.
Executives at Cheniere Energy, the largest U.S. natural-gas exporter, have benefited from the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, which has clogged some 20% of flows of liquefied natural gas. In late March, Chief Commercial Officer Anatol Feygin sold $11.8 million worth of stock, only his third sale since joining the company in 2014.
The selling spree might not be over. Kevin MacCurdy, director of research at financial-services firm Pickering Energy Partners, said he expected to see some volatility in energy stocks in the short term but that they have thus far lagged behind the steep rise in oil prices.
“Oil stocks and oil prices could be down on headlines,” he said. “But fundamentally, it is a strong picture looking six months, a year out.”
Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com, Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com and Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com