ConocoPhillips Posts $31.8 Billion Loss on Charges

Source: New York Times

HOUSTON (AP) -- ConocoPhillips said Wednesday it lost $31.8 billion in the final three months of 2008 as the third-largest U.S. oil company recorded massive, previously disclosed one-time charges to write down assets and encountered sharply lower crude prices.

ConocoPhillips was the first of the major oil companies to report fourth-quarter earnings. Not everyone is expected to resort to the measures it has taken to ride out the recession -- layoffs, asset writedowns, lower spending -- but earnings across the board are forecast to be the worst in many quarters.

The Houston-based company's net income for the October-December period amounted to a loss of $21.37 per share, compared with a profit of $4.4 billion, or $2.71 per share, during the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell 18 percent to $44.5 billion from $52.7 billion a year ago.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/28/business/AP-Earns-ConocoPhillips.html?_r=1

---

cry me a fvcking river. (cue world's smallest violin)

inflated theose assets were!

are partly valued based on the price of oil and gas. When oil is $145 per barrel every oil company has more reserves since the amount of reserves reported is dependent on what is economically feasible to remove from the ground. With oil down around $40 per barrel, oil that costs $60 per barrel to extract are excluded from the reserves.

Or some equivalent of that.

:shrug: