Occidental Petroleum Corp. reported a third-quarter loss on sliding crude prices, a slump in production tied to the spin off of the company’s California business, and writedowns of the value of oil and natural gas fields. The company lost $2.61 billion, or $3.42 a share, compared with net income of $1.21 billion, or $1.55, a year earlier, Houston-based Occidental said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding some one-time items, the per-share gain was 3 cents above expectation. Estimates had ranged from a 15-cent loss to a 14-cent gain among the 27 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Occidental’s crude and natural gas output fell after the company cleaved off its West Coast holdings into a separate company in late 2014. A glut of North American supply has deflated the benchmark U.S. oil price by 52 percent to an average of $46.50 a barrel during the quarter from $97.25 a year earlier. The […]