ConocoPhillips' Profit Lowered

The third biggest U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips cautioned investors Wednesday that its first-quarter earnings, to be released on April, 25, will suffer from slightly lower oil prices, lower production volumes and higher corporate costs.

For the three months ended March 31, ConocoPhillips said oil and gas production "is anticipated to be lower than the previous quarter," when it pumped the equivalent of 2.05 million barrels of oil a day. The company did not provide further details.

The estimate does not include production from ConocoPhillips' share in Russian oil company Lukoil. Including Lukoil, Conoco's fourth quarter daily production averaged 2.49 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The decline was blamed primarily on unplanned production outages on fields in the United States and mandated production cuts in member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries where ConocoPhillips is active.