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Exxon Mobil Corp. posted its worst quarterly performance in six years as a worldwide glut of oil collapsed prices faster than explorers trimmed costs.

Net income fell to $4.19 billion, or $1 a share, from $8.78 billion, or $2.05, a year earlier, the Irving, Texas-based company said in a statement on Friday. The per-share result was 11 cents lower than the average estimate of 20 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Exxon shares fell 1.9 percent to $81.40 in trading before regular U.S. equity markets opened.

Exxon cut share repurchases for the current quarter in half to $500 million compared with the April-to-June period, according to the statement. Refinery profits fattened by lower costs for crude were more than offset by weaker results in the company’s primary business, oil and natural gas production, Exxon said. The company’s U.S. wells posted a $47 million loss.

“The buyback program is a big shocker,” Robbert van Batenburg, market strategist at Societe Generale which rates the shares a buy and who doesn’t own any, said in a phone interview. “The energy space has been traditionally one of the biggest sectors buying back stock.”

Exxon reduced spending on major projects like floating crude platforms and gas-export terminals by 20 percent to $6.746 billion during the quarter, according to the statement. International crude prices fell 42 percent from the previous year to an average of $63.50 a barrel.

Shrinking Spending

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson was among the first oil-industry bosses to shrink spending as the crude rout began taking shape more than a year ago. After cutting the budget by 9.3 percent in 2014, this year’s reduction may exceed the original 12 percent target, the company disclosed during an April 30 conference call with analysts.

Tillerson, an Exxon lifer whose 10th year as CEO began in January, has been pessimistic about the prospects for an imminent oil-market rebound. On April 21, he told a Houston energy conference that the supply glut and low prices will persist “for the next couple of years” at least.

Those remarks proved prophetic: international crude prices that rose 45 percent between Jan. 13 and May 6 have since tumbled 21 percent, inaugurating the second oil bear market in 14 months.

Even as Tillerson cut spending and re-evaluated whether some multi-billion dollar projects make economic sense with oil around $50 a barrel, the company has discovered a field off the coast of Guyana that the government said may hold the equivalent of more than 700 million barrels of crude. Such a prize would be worth about $40 billion at current oil prices.

(Adds buybacks cut and U.S. upstream loss in third paragraph, analyst comment in fourth paragraph.)