HOUSTON — Hurt by falling oil prices, ConocoPhillips reported a loss during its fourth quarter and said it would cut spending on drilling and exploration projects in parts of the U.S.
“We are responding decisively to a weak price outlook in 2015,” said CEO and Chairman Ryan Lance, in a statement.
Oil prices have fallen below $50 a barrel, down from as much as $100 a barrel in June, due to an oversupply of oil.
The Houston oil and gas company reported Thursday a loss of $39 million, or 3 cents per share during the quarter, compared with a net income of $2.5 billion, or $2 per share, in the same period a year ago.
Adjusted to remove one-time items, the company had earnings of 60 cents per share. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 62 cents per share.
Revenue fell 15 percent to $11.85 billion in the period.
ConocoPhillips said it will cut its capital expenditures to $11.5 billion from its previously announced $13.5 billion. It said most of the cuts in spending will come from onshore drilling and exploration projects in the contiguous U.S. It expects oil production growth between 2 percent and 3 percent for the year.
Shares of ConocoPhillips dropped $1.20, or 1.9 percent, to $61.38 in morning trading Thursday.
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Parts of this story were generated by Automated Insights http://automatedinsights.com/ap using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on COP at http://www.zacks.com/ap/COP
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