Halliburton’s strategy for 2017 is shifting, and the company will have a whole different M.O. this year. Jeff Miller, Halliburton President expressed his feelings about the new year this way: “in many ways, 2016 was like a bar room brawl where everyone, and I mean everyone, took a punch. But …
Read More »8 Quick Trends To Listen For During Oilfield Service Conference Calls This Earnings Season
Schlumberger kicks off 4Q earnings season this week, hosting a conference call Friday morning to discuss the 2017 outlook. During the fourth quarter, a cyclical inflection point materialized in the US onshore market. A key question during the calls this earnings season will be how sustainable the cyclical growth trajectory …
Read More »Those Who Cut The Deepest Will Staff Up The Quickest [2 Charts]
In the first months of the downturn, we began warning that a workforce designed for $100 oil is not the same one needed at $50 oil. However, the oilfield service industry right sized extremely quickly to lower activity levels over the past two years. We’ll soon see just how surgical these cuts …
Read More »5 Questions We Hope Weatherford’s New CEO Answers On February 2nd
On February 2, Weatherford’s new CEO Krishna Shivram will talk to investors for the first time as the boss of the company. He’s got some work to do. The market will be looking for a restoration of confidence. That means Krishna needs to have a story for the new Weatherford …
Read More »Four Likely Buyers In Oilfield Service For 2017
In E&P, most analysts expect M&A action to be hot and heavy during the first half of 2017. There is less consensus about a wave of M&A coming in oilfield service (OFS), partly because of challenging valuations. So we put pen to paper this week and came up with the …
Read More »E&P In A Nano-Darcy World – A Brute Force Enterprise Finding Elegance
On a conference call in 2011, the always eloquent Clay Williams of National Oilwell Varco (then CFO, now CEO) said: The unconventional shale model is utterly unlike drilling a generation ago, which saw fleeting glimpses of precious darcy reservoir rock here or there, elusive four-way closure, a rare and fortuitous geologic …
Read More »Saudization Gets Real: Contractors Are Selling Out To Avoid Being Phased Out
For service and drilling contractors that want a piece of Saudi Aramco’s $30bn annual budget, a line has been drawn in the desert sand. As we write, the NOC is making some of its first big moves to make good on an ambitious local content plan unveiled about a year ago. …
Read More »Baker Lite: Baker Hughes’ North American Frac Fleet Is About To Change Hands
For the past six months, Baker Hughes has publicly rethought its involvement in the pressure pumping business. Now a material transaction is possible before year-end. The initiative is part of the big push underway by all of the Big 3 oil service companies to lighten their asset bases. Said another way, the Big 3 …
Read More »Schlumberger Pushes Pricing, Talks Superlaterals And Cyclical Bottom
On Schlumberger’s conference call Friday morning, CEO Paal Kibsgaard made one central theme very clear. He is preparing his organization for growth again. Conversations with almost every Schlumberger customer on pricing increases have begun. Outside of Asia Pacific, Kibsgaard sees tender shoots of recovery sprouting in every market across the globe. There’s a …
Read More »At The Cusp Of 3Q16 EPS Season, The Worm Has Finally Turned
Oilfield earnings season begins this week with Halliburton’s conference call. The tone on this upcoming round of calls is likely to be more positive than any time in recent memory. In this Thinking Ahead we outline key calls to monitor and discuss seven key themes we expect to be prevalent during the imminent earnings season. …
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