Chevron Corp. posted its first annual loss since at least 1980 as the world’s biggest oil companies struggle to emerge from the worst collapse in a generation. Investors punished the stock, wiping out about $5 billion in market value. The company had a $497 million loss last year and failed to replace all of the crude and natural gas it pumped with new reserves, San Ramon, California-based Chevron said in a statement on Friday. As the first so-called supermajor oil company to post year-end results, Chevron’s earnings may herald bleak news for an industry battered by the oil-market crash that began in mid 2014. After hundreds of thousands of job cuts, billions of dollars in asset sales and the accumulation of staggering debt loads to endure the collapse, investors have been optimistic that oil producers who survived the darkest days are on the cusp of a new era of […]