French oil major Total has today reported a drop in its 4Q 2014 net income. The company’s adjusted net income was $2.8 billion, a 17% fall when compared to $3.4 billion earned in the fourth quarter last year.
Bloomberg has reported that, despite the drop, Total’s net income beat the analysts’ forecasts. They expected to see the profit in the range of $2.5 billion.
Total has said that for the period ahead, all of the Group’s segments are expanding their cost-cutting programs to get through the challenging market period, with no compromise on the absolute priority to safety.
According to Reuters, Total said that it expects to reduce the number of workers by 2000 by the end of the year. However, according to the news agency, these cuts would be mainly through natural attrition , as the company simply won’t hire new workers.
Also Total has said that it plans to speed up the execution of its 2015-17 asset sale program of $10 billion by selling 5B$ of assets in 2015, in addition to benefiting from the completion of about $4 billion of asset sales that were already signed and pending at the start of the year.
The Group plans to lower its organic investments by more than 10% from 26.4 B$ in 2014 to 23-24 B$ in 2015, by reducing investments in brownfield developments and stopping certain projects that have become less profitable.
Offshore Energy Today Staff