Chevron (NYSE: CVX) delivered better-than-expected earnings in the second quarter of 2025 despite falling oil prices and weaker refining margins. Profits fell year-over-year. However, strong production in the Permian Basin and careful capital management allowed the company to generate solid cash flow. This also helped maintain returns for shareholders.
Alongside its financial results, Chevron reaffirmed its climate goals. This includes net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2050. It also involves ongoing investments in carbon capture, hydrogen, and renewable fuels. These efforts support a wider energy transition strategy.
Chevron’s Q2 Delivers Amid Oil Price Drops
Chevron Corporation shared its financial results for the second quarter of 2025. The results show pressure from lower oil prices but also show progress in its long-term strategy.
For the quarter ending June 30, 2025, the company posted net income of $2.49 billion, or $1.45 per share. After adjusting for special items, earnings came in at $1.77 per share, slightly higher than what Wall Street expected.
Total revenue came in at $44.82 billion, a decline of about 12% compared to the same quarter last year. This marks Chevron’s lowest quarterly profit in four years, largely due to weaker oil prices and refining margins.
Even so, the company’s earnings still exceeded analyst expectations on an adjusted basis.
Chevron’s earnings followed a similar trend seen across the oil and gas sector. Other major energy firms also reported lower profits, driven by high production levels and flat global demand.
In particular, weaker natural gas prices and reduced margins in fuels and chemicals impacted Chevron’s bottom line.
Strong Oil Production and Cash Flow Help Offset Weak Prices
Despite the decline in profits, Chevron maintained a strong operating performance. The company increased production in the Permian Basin, reaching over 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. This is the highest output the company has reported from that region since mid-2024.
Chevron generated $4.9 billion in free cash flow during the quarter, a 15% increase compared to the first quarter of the year. The company also returned $5.5 billion to shareholders through a mix of dividends and share buybacks.
Notably, Chevron continued its stock buyback program temporarily in the second quarter. The oil major’s ongoing efforts to acquire Hess Corporation will boost its access to oil reserves in Guyana.
Overall, Chevron’s operational strength and disciplined capital management helped it weather the effects of falling oil prices.
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Cleaner Barrels Ahead: Chevron’s Climate and Net Zero Plan
Chevron continues to work toward reducing its greenhouse gas emissions while meeting global energy demand. The company has a long-term goal of reaching net-zero emissions for its upstream Scope 1 and Scope 2 operations by 2050.
Scope 1 includes direct emissions from Chevron’s operations. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from electricity and heat that Chevron buys.
Chevron measures emissions with a full value chain approach. This includes Scope 3 emissions. These emissions cover the use of sold products, such as gasoline and diesel. Although the company has not committed to a full Scope 3 net-zero goal, it reports these figures for transparency and to track progress.
In addition to these goals, Chevron has introduced a carbon intensity reduction target, aiming to cut emissions per unit of energy produced. The company’s target is to reduce its Portfolio Carbon Intensity by more than 5% by 2028, using a 2022 baseline.
Chevron’s reported greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2024 are approximately:
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Scope 1: 53 to 54 million tonnes CO2 equivalent (Mt CO2e)
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Scope 2 (market-based indirect emissions): about 3 to 4 million tonnes CO2e
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Scope 3 (mainly from use of sold products): between 416 million and 717 million tonnes CO2e, depending on calculation method (production, throughput, or sales method).
Chevron’s portfolio carbon intensity is at around 70.7 grams CO2e per megajoule energy produced. The oil giant’s upstream carbon intensity is about 23.9 kg CO2e per barrel of oil equivalent.
Investing in Lower-Carbon Solutions
Beyond reducing emissions from its own operations, Chevron is building a portfolio of low-carbon businesses. The company is investing in carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen, and renewable fuels.
According to its 2024 Corporate Sustainability Highlights, Chevron invested over $600 million in over 100 emissions abatement projects in 2024, which will grow to $1.5 billion this year. These projects aim to cut around 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year. These include:
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methane emission reductions through facility retrofits,
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electrification of natural gas compression stations, and
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efficiency improvements at refineries and LNG plants.
Moreover, Chevron has invested over $1 billion in carbon capture and storage projects. These efforts aim to cut emissions by around 5 million tonnes of CO2 each year. The company is growing its range of abatement technologies and low-carbon investments. This shows a big increase from previous years.
These efforts aim to reduce the company’s upstream carbon intensity to around 24 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per barrel of oil. Chevron’s decarbonization plan includes energy efficiency upgrades, equipment changes, and the use of renewable electricity at production sites.
Chevron has partnerships with multiple firms focused on carbon removal, including projects that store CO₂ underground or use advanced technologies to capture emissions at industrial sites. These investments are intended to grow over time as demand for clean energy increases.
The company is also looking into hydrogen storage solutions. It has also invested early in fusion energy technologies. These ventures are still in development but represent Chevron’s effort to stay ahead of long-term changes in the energy system.
Chevron’s total planned investment in low-carbon businesses is projected to reach $10 billion through 2028. The company has made it clear that it wants to be part of the energy transition, even while continuing to supply traditional oil and gas.
Eyes on 2026: Risks, Rewards, and What’s Next for Chevron
Still, Chevron faces criticism from some investors and environmental groups. Concerns include how fast things are changing. There’s also a need for total emissions cuts, not just reducing intensity.
Plus, the company keeps investing in oil and gas production. Chevron responds by saying it must balance energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability. It also supports carbon markets, carbon pricing, and efforts to scale up verified carbon credits.
Though the amount or figure wasn’t disclosed, Chevron has bought millions of carbon credits. Between 2022 and 2024, Chevron’s Colombian subsidiary purchased around 3 million carbon credits. These credits support Indigenous community conservation projects in the Colombian Amazon through the REDD+ program.
Chevron also bought 1.8 million carbon credits from the Cotuhé Putumayo project. This purchase helped offset regional emissions. These credits mainly reflect avoided deforestation and conservation efforts.
Chevron believes oil and gas will remain important for decades. Their strategy focuses on cutting emissions from this supply. At the same time, they are developing new energy solutions.
The company’s Q2 results show the pressure facing oil producers in a lower-price environment. Even though revenue and profits fell from last year, Chevron posted solid operating results.
Whether Chevron can meet its 2050 net-zero goals while maintaining shareholder value and energy supply will depend on policy changes, market demand, and technological progress. But for now, the company is signaling that it plans to be part of both today’s energy system and tomorrow’s clean energy transition.
The post Chevron (CVX Stock) Powers Through Q2 With $5.5B Payout, Permian Growth, and Net-Zero Push appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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