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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery lost $1.24 to $26.21 on the New York Merc, while Brent for April lost 78 cents to $30.06 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $13.25 to WTI ($12.96), up from a discount of $13.85. Natural gas for March lost 5.2 cents to $1.994. The TSX energy index lost a fraction to close at 140.04.

Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) added 43 cents to $13.95 on 14 million shares, after releasing fourth quarter financials that were worse than analysts had expected, but nonetheless pleasing the market with its latest commitments to cost cuts. The dividend, budget and work force are all being reduced, again. Cenovus previously lowered its quarterly dividend to 16 cents from 26.62 cents last July, and is now lowering it all the way to five cents, for a yield of 1.4 per cent. The budget is also going down for the second time in recent months. In October, Cenovus had said it would spend $1.5-billion to $2-billion in 2016, focusing on its oil sands projects. It changed its mind in December and put the budget at $1.4-billion to $1.6-billion. Now it has nudged the budget even further down to a range of $1.2-billion to $1.3-billion. It has also announced more layoffs. These were announced periodically throughout 2015, with Cenovus eventually stating in October that by year-end 2015, it expected to have around 4,000 employees (including contractors), a 24-per-cent decrease over the prior year. It repeated the 24-per-cent figure today and said more layoffs are still to come, though it did not specify how many more jobs would be affected. All in all, said Cenovus, it was able to accomplish $540-million in cost savings last year (more than double the $200-million it originally targeted) and expects another $400-million to $500-million this year. Investors seemed pleased with the announcement over all, even though, as noted above, the quarterly results were well below analysts' forecasts. Although Cenovus's oil production of around 200,000 barrels a day was roughly in line with analysts' predictions, cash flow per share was just 33 cents (compared with the 50 cents predicted by analysts) and operating loss was 53 cents (compared with the 20 cents predicted by analysts).

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