ConocoPhillips’s 2008 fourth-quarter net loss of $31.8bn prompted analysts on Wednesday to question how the US’s third-largest oil company will cope this year with the plunge in oil and natural gas prices.

Conoco swung to a loss, from net income of $4.4bn in the year-earlier quarter, on plunging commodity prices and a massive $34bn write-down on the ensuing reduction in its asset values.