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Oct 28 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp, the fourth-largest U.S. oil producer, posted a better-than-expected adjusted quarterly earnings on Wednesday as it slashed costs to offset tumbling crude prices and said it would exit North Dakota's Bakken shale oil formation to save capital.
The results reflect the ongoing belt-tightening by Occidental and its oil industry peers to survive during a period of low prices.
Houston-based Occidental slashed its capital budget by $300 million in the quarter, and Chief Executive Steve Chazen said the company has "made a strategic decision to exit" the Bakken, which had drained resources away from Occidental's core Texan shale fields.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Occidental had sold its North Dakota assets to private equity fund Lime Rock Resources.
The company, which also has operations in Oman and Colombia, posted a net loss of $2.61 billion, or $3.42 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.55 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned 3 cents per share.
By that measure, analysts expected a loss of a penny per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Average daily production rose 16 percent to 689,000 barrel of oil equivalent (boe) from the year-ago quarter, even as the average price Occidental received for its oil fell 49 percent to $47.78 per barrel.
Shares of Occidental rose 0.4 percent to $70.50 in premarket trading.
(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Williston, N.D. and Swetha Gopinath in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and W Simon)