The Houston-based oil giant with major operations in Alaska said the moves will improve its financial position and help reduce debts, noting asset sales could include oil and gas properties and oil refineries. But it offered few other details.
To help reassure investors, the nation's third-largest oil company behind Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron also announced a 6 percent increase in its quarterly dividend, to 50 cents per share.
Conoco and other major oil and gas companies are grappling with a recession-fueled pullback in energy demand and weaker oil and natural gas prices. Many of those companies cut spending and costs in 2009 amid the downturn, eliminating thousands of jobs and hurting business for oil field services and equipment providers in Houston.
Conoco's word that it will drop spending to $11 billion in 2010, after cutting it 37 percent to $12.5 billion in 2009, suggests continued headwinds for the industry into next year.
"There is no question in my mind that capital spending will continue to decline across the board," said Fadel Gheit, industry analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.
Other major oil companies could give clues about next year's spending levels in their third-quarter earnings reports at the end of this month.
Conoco said unloading $10 billion in assets will help with a goal to have a debt-to-capital ratio of 20 to 25 percent, down from 34 percent at the end of the second quarter. But the company was not ready to discuss which assets could be sold.
Gheit said the timing isn't the best for putting oil and gas assets on the block, especially with low valuations in the battered refining sector.
"If you sell refining assets now, you're going to get scrap value," he said.
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