ExxonMobil and Chevron Post Q1 Results, Marathon Books a $1.4B Refining Quarter, and Phillips 66 Expands Sweeny and Freeport Capacity

This week's intelligence covers a wave of Q1 2026 earnings from the largest U.S. energy and refining names: ExxonMobil and Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66. We also dig into the Joliet Technology Center approval in Illinois, Aligned's Project Caprock data center buildout in Texas, and the latest construction starts and workforce data showing nonresidential building up roughly 80 percent year over year.

ExxonMobil Q1: $4.2 Billion in Earnings, Golden Pass Online, Energy Products Surges

ExxonMobil reported first quarter 2026 earnings of $4.2 billion on May 1, or $8.8 billion excluding $3.9 billion in unfavorable timing effects and a $0.7 billion identified item. Earnings per share came in at $1.00, or $2.09 on the same adjusted basis. The company generated $9.2 billion in shareholder distributions in the quarter and posted a one year total shareholder return of 48 percent.

The Energy Products segment was the headline. Q1 earnings of $2.8 billion were up roughly $2 billion year over year, driven by record Gulf Coast refinery utilization and tightening global product supply. Throughput rose 200,000 barrels per day from February to March alone. Underneath those numbers, the structural picture is just as important: Permian production is on track to reach 1.8 million oil equivalent barrels per day in 2026, and Guyana set a new quarterly production record of more than 900,000 barrels per day, with the Uaru, Whiptail, and Hammerhead projects all under construction.

For LNG, ExxonMobil officially crossed a major threshold. Golden Pass LNG, the joint venture with QatarEnergy, achieved first LNG production from Train 1 in March 2026 at the Sabine Pass terminal, increasing total U.S. LNG export capacity by approximately 5 percent. Train 2 is targeting mechanical completion by year end 2026, and Train 3 is targeting Q2 2027. The QatarEnergy facility damage from the Middle East conflict is now estimated to require a 3 to 5 year repair window, representing approximately 3 percent of ExxonMobil's global production. That capacity loss is, in effect, being directly backfilled by U.S. Gulf Coast LNG.

What this means for fabrication and construction: ExxonMobil's Q1 numbers tell you exactly where the next wave of capital deployment is going: Permian growth, Guyana expansion, and U.S. Gulf Coast refining and LNG. Train 2 at Golden Pass moving toward mechanical completion this year is a fabrication and field execution story. So is the structural pull on Gulf Coast refinery throughput. Contractors with shop capacity, modular delivery, and Gulf Coast field crews are sitting in the path of multiple parallel capital programs from a single owner with $9.2 billion in quarterly distributions and growing.

Chevron Q1: Hess Production Flows In, Downstream Earnings Up Year Over Year

Chevron reported first quarter 2026 earnings of $2.21 billion, or $1.11 per diluted share, on May 1. Adjusted earnings of $2.79 billion were down from $3.81 billion a year earlier, reflecting roughly $2.9 billion in unfavorable timing effects from financial derivatives and LIFO inventory accounting. Stripping those out, Chevron said earnings actually improved on stronger upstream production and better refining margins.

The Hess acquisition is now fully reflected in the numbers. International upstream net oil equivalent production rose to 1.83 million barrels per day, primarily on the Hess deal and Guyana growth. U.S. upstream production was 2.02 million barrels per day. The U.S. Downstream segment posted $196 million in Q1, up from $103 million a year ago, on improved refining margins. The Permian remains the company's largest U.S. cash engine.

Goldman Sachs raised its Chevron price target after the report, citing the integrated upstream downstream cash generation profile and a long term LNG opportunity set that the market is still under pricing. Like ExxonMobil, Chevron is signaling that the next wave of capital is going into U.S. shale, integrated Gulf operations, and selective LNG investment, not into new frontier exploration.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Chevron's Permian and Gulf footprint is operating at scale, and the Hess deal expanded the upstream commitment without changing the structural need for downstream and midstream capacity. Refinery margin recovery is now flowing through earnings, which historically has translated into delayed capital projects coming back to the schedule. Pasadena, El Segundo, Pascagoula, and Salt Lake City are all candidates for capital and turnaround scope as cash flow normalizes through the year.

Marathon Petroleum: $1.4 Billion R&M Quarter, 40% of 2026 Turnarounds Already Done

Marathon Petroleum reported Q1 2026 net income of $511 million, or $1.73 per diluted share, on May 5, with adjusted net income of $487 million. Refining and Marketing segment adjusted EBITDA hit $1.4 billion versus $489 million a year earlier, with EBITDA per barrel jumping to $5.37 from $1.91. R&M margin came in at $17.74 per barrel against $13.38 in Q1 2025. Crude capacity utilization was 89 percent, on total throughput of 2.9 million barrels per day.

The most important operational data point in the release was timing. Marathon completed approximately 40 percent of its full year 2026 planned turnaround activity in the first quarter alone, with $530 million in turnaround costs in Q1 and full year guidance unchanged at roughly $1.35 billion. Refining operating costs rose to $6.23 per barrel from $5.74, reflecting the heavier turnaround mix.

The company also generated $1.1 billion in cash from operations, swinging from a $64 million outflow in Q1 2025. The Refining and Marketing margin recovery is the single biggest swing factor for U.S. independent refiners right now, and Marathon is the cleanest read on the pattern: tight global product markets, high domestic utilization, structurally lower feedstock costs on Permian crude.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Forty percent of full year turnaround activity completed in a single quarter is an extraordinary front loading of work, and it tells you the spring 2026 turnaround season was as busy as the U.S. refining industry has seen in years. The work is not over. Another $820 million of turnaround spend is queued for the rest of the year, with a heavy concentration of fall outages typically tied to Q3 and Q4 schedules. Contractors with proven turnaround crews, fabrication capacity for replacement components, and the workforce flexibility to surge into peak windows are looking at sustained backlog through 2026 and into 2027.

Phillips 66 Formalizes Sweeny and Freeport Capacity Expansions

Phillips 66 reported Q1 2026 earnings of $207 million, or $0.51 per share, on April 29. Adjusted earnings of $200 million were down sharply from $1.0 billion in Q4 2025, but the operational story underneath was strong. The company formalized a 23 percent capacity expansion at its Sweeny NGL fractionation complex and a 15 percent expansion at its Freeport LPG export dock, both reflecting 2025 debottlenecking work. Refining utilization was 95 percent with an 87 percent clean product yield, and the company increased its annualized quarterly dividend by 7 percent.

The Sweeny and Freeport expansions matter beyond the headline percentages. The U.S. is now the largest LPG exporter in the world, and the Freeport dock is one of a handful of choke points for that flow. A 15 percent capacity increase at Freeport translates into materially more product moving to Asia and Europe, particularly into the markets where Middle East supply has been disrupted. Sweeny's 23 percent NGL fractionation increase keeps pace, ensuring upstream feedstock can be processed and routed to export.

Phillips 66 ended the quarter with approximately $6.0 billion in liquidity, giving the company plenty of room to continue capital investment through the cycle. The 7 percent dividend increase signals confidence in the through cycle cash generation profile.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Capacity expansions through debottlenecking are the most fabrication intensive form of brownfield work in the petrochemical and midstream sectors. Sweeny and Freeport increases of 23 percent and 15 percent each represent substantial scope in pipe, vessels, structural steel, electrical and instrumentation, and field execution. Importantly, these are exactly the kinds of expansions that owners want completed inside fixed turnaround windows, which makes scheduling and crew availability the binding constraint. Vertically integrated execution partners that can pre fabricate in shop and complete in field within compressed timelines are exactly what the Freeport and Sweeny corridors are pulling for.

Joliet $20 Billion Data Center Campus Approved, Caprock Builds Out

Two notable data center stories made progress this week. The Joliet City Council in Illinois approved the Joliet Technology Center, a $20 billion, 795 acre campus to be developed by PowerHouse Data Centers and Hillwood. The project will span 24 buildings and reach up to 1.8 gigawatts at full buildout, making it one of the largest data center campuses in the Midwest.

In Texas, Aligned Data Centers continued to advance Project Caprock in Hale County, a 540 megawatt, 313 acre campus with six facilities totaling 1.65 million square feet and a projected $5 billion economic impact. Initial delivery is now set for Q1 2027. Texas continues to benefit from the same combination of available power, business friendly siting, and proximity to fiber that has pushed multiple hyperscaler announcements into the state over the past 18 months.

Both projects are part of the same trend the Sightline Climate report exposed last week: hyperscaler announcement velocity is far ahead of construction velocity. Joliet has been approved at the city council level. Caprock has site work underway. The owners and construction partners that are actually moving dirt are the ones positioned to capture the 2027 and 2028 commissioning windows. The rest of the announced pipeline is still trying to close on power, transmission, and labor.

What this means for fabrication and construction: Joliet at 1.8 gigawatts and Caprock at 540 megawatts are both heavy industrial scopes by any honest measure. The structural steel, mechanical modules, switchgear lineups, and chiller plants required for these campuses are easily as large as a midsize petrochemical complex. Fabricators who already serve the energy sector are increasingly the right answer for hyperscale campuses, because the engineering, materials, and execution disciplines transfer directly. The data center owners are figuring this out, and the contractor lists are starting to look familiar to anyone who has worked on a Gulf Coast refinery or LNG project.

Construction Starts: Nonresidential Up Roughly 80% Year Over Year

The April 2026 Construction Economy Brief from ConstructConnect's Chief Economist Michael Guckes confirmed what the headline numbers have been pointing toward all year: nonresidential building construction is up roughly 80 percent compared to a year ago, megaprojects exceeding $1 billion are up more than 500 percent year to date, and offices, including data centers, are driving most of the surge. The same brief identified another approximately $32 billion of construction opportunity outside of data centers, distributed across eight nonresidential and civil subcategories that are growing across both public and private sectors.

The Construction Backlog Indicator from the Associated Builders and Contractors rose to 8.6 months in March from 8.1 in February, the highest reading since mid 2024. Construction employment increased by 26,000 jobs in March and has averaged 19,300 jobs per month through the first quarter, a meaningful improvement after the industry actually shed jobs in 2025.

On the macro side, the latest JOLTS data showed that overall U.S. job openings remained stable at 6.9 million in April, with hires rising by 655,000. The April employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to show payroll growth of roughly 50,000 to 70,000 net new jobs across the economy, a slowdown from March's 178,000 surprise. Underneath the slower headline number, however, the construction specific dynamics remain tight: high backlog, low quits, and a hiring rate near the lowest level on record.

What this means for fabrication and construction: An 80 percent year over year jump in nonresidential building starts, a 500 percent megaproject surge, and a backlog now sitting at 8.6 months should put every owner and EPC on notice: the constraint is no longer demand or capital, it is execution capacity. The contractors and fabricators that can credibly commit to a schedule and deliver are about to be the most valuable counterparties in U.S. industrial construction. Vertically integrated firms with their own shops, their own crews, and their own management bench are exactly the operating model the market is pulling for, and PSV Industries is built on that model.

The Bottom Line

ExxonMobil and Chevron printing strong upstream and downstream results. Marathon completing 40 percent of its 2026 turnarounds in a single quarter. Phillips 66 formalizing material capacity expansions at Sweeny and Freeport. Joliet greenlighting a $20 billion data center campus. Aligned advancing Project Caprock toward 2027 delivery. And nonresidential construction starts up 80 percent year over year against a labor market hiring at the slowest rate on record.

The signal across all of it is the same. American industrial capital is being deployed at a scale and pace that the country has not seen in decades, and the binding constraint is execution. PSV Industries is positioned to execute the work the rest of the market is going to struggle to staff, and our operating model is built for exactly the environment 2026 has become.