he Swiss trader and mining operator Glencore has made a downward adjustment of the financial worth of its oil assets in Chad by USD 792 million, we learn from its financial report for the period covering the first half of 2015. The company explains this situation by the important modifications made to its Chadian operations.

These modifications were on the volume of investments, production profiles and the number of machines for ongoing drills. Glencore mentions that this decision was taken due to the drop in oil prices on the international market which started in 2014 and continued this year in 2015.

It is not only the Chadian assets that registered a setback, the group again reduced its investment prospects to less than USD 5 billion for 2016, to face the steady fall in prices for the other mining commodities in which it operates. “We cannot invest by relying on the hope of seeing the Chinese economy improve”, said Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore CEO quoted by Reuters.

The financial performance for the first half of the year was far from brilliant, the group announced a drop of 56% in the distributable income for the period. Moreover, its management informed that its trading arm might not generate more appreciable revenues. Two announcements which sped up the fall of its share value on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (-8%), posting at -34.5% the loss in value of this market since the beginning of the year.