As commodity prices have tumbled, ConocoPhillips has worked to curb its spending this year, announcing job cuts and reductions in capital expenditures.
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“We are accelerating actions to position our company for low and volatile prices, while improving the underlying performance of the business”, Ryan Lance, Conoco’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
ConocoPhillips (COP) on Thursday reported a third-quarter loss of $1.07 billion, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier. Excluding non-recurring items, such as the termination of a rig contract, a pension settlement and restructuring costs, the per-share loss came to 38 cents, wider than the FactSet consensus for losses per share of 37 cents.
Its fields in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota picked up a 10 percent increase in production, together reaching 234,000 barrels of oil per day, while its Canadian operations bolstered output 39 percent.
Production grew 4% excluding Libya, dispositions and downtime.
COP says it will divest assets and lower its cost structure in response to weak crude oil prices but remains committed to a “compelling” dividend.
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For the fourth quarter, ConocoPhillips projects production of 1,585 MBOED to 1,625 MBOED. These steps will make us more flexible and resilient for the future. In the third quarter of 2014, the company generated $2.7 billion, a far cry from the current earnings. Revenue was reported as $135.96 billion. That is well off of the peak of $28 billion Total spent in 2013 and much lower than the $23 billion to $24 billion Total is expected to spend this year.
