Excess Losses

ConocoPhillips lost $31 billion dollars in the 4th quarter of 2008. The crooks.

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 and encountered sharply lower crude prices.

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.

Excluding one-time items, adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter were $1.9 billion, or $1.28 a share, versus $4.1 billion, or $2.55 a share, a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings of $1.22 a share on revenue of $36.3 billion. Those forecasts typically exclude one-time items.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips was the first of the major oil companies to report fourth-quarter earnings. As expected, the results were by far the worst of 2008.

"Our financial performance for the quarter reflects the depressed economic conditions and business environment impacting not only our industry, but domestic and global markets as well," chairman and chief executive Jim Mulva said in a statement.

In addition to the one-time charges, ConocoPhillips was hit hard by oil's unprecedented plunge after peaking above $147 a barrel in July. When the fourth quarter began Oct. 1, crude was trading at around $100 a barrel. By year's end, the price was down to $44.60, a decline of nearly 60 percent.

I wonder if our totally wise government and our Smartest President Ever™ are going to step up to the plate and propose a bail out for the oil companies? After all if wealth re-distribution is the order of the day don't the oil companies deserve their share?