OXY Occidental Petroleum Corporation

By Austen Hufford 

Occidental Petroleum Corp. reported a quarterly loss and revenue decline from the year prior, as realized prices rose but production fell.

Still on a sequential basis, production increased for the first time in more than a year.

Houston-based Occidental reported a fourth-quarter loss of $272 million, or 36 cents a share, compared with a loss of $5.18 billion, or $6.78 a share, a year prior. The year-earlier period had a multibillion asset impairment charge. Excluding various items, the company posted a quarterly loss of 13 cents a share, compared with a loss of 17 cents a share a year earlier.

Total sales from fell 0.6% to $2.79 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a loss of two cents a share on revenue of $2.71 billion. The fourth quarter reflects higher commodity prices, offset by lower sales volumes.

Occidental has been working to cut costs while dealing with lower energy prices in recent years. The realized crude oil price grew 17% to $45.08 a barrel from a year earlier and 8.7% from the quarter before. Occidental has slowly started to increase production as energy prices have stabilized. In its latest quarter, production fell 11% from a year earlier to 607,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, but rose from 605,000 in the previous quarter.

In 2017, the company plans capital spending of $3.0 billion to $3.6 billion, depending on commodity prices.

Shares of Occidental fell 0.1% to in premarket trading.

Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2017 09:40 ET (14:40 GMT)

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