French Oil Giant Surrenders to Falling Prices
How do you say, "another oil giant is hit by the steep decline in oil prices" in French? We have no idea. We do know this:
Total
, the largest French oil company, today posted a 36% decline in the first quarter.
The news comes after
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Exxon Mobil Corporation Report
reported a 58% nosedive in first quarter earnings last week, its lowest level in over five years.
ConocoPhillips
(COP) - Get ConocoPhillips Report
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was also down 80%, while Europe's
BP
and
Royal Dutch Shell
both declined 62%.
Total said it earned 2.29 billion euro from 3.6 billion euro in the year-ago period. Its sales fell 32% to 30 billion euro.
Replacement cost profit, a key measure of oil companies, depreciated 43% to $2.8 billion from $4.9 billion.
Brent crude averaged $96.48 a barrel in the first quarter of 2008 and reached almost $150 a barrel in July. Since then, however, prices have dropped steeply and at one point were $50.
On Wednesday oil prices traded above $54 a barrel.
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