Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard said the world’s largest oilfield services firm cut almost 70,000 jobs in less than three years as its revenues plummeted 50 percent during a prolonged oil bust.
Now, Schlumberger is growing in the U.S. to meet surging shale oil production and seeing measured progress in the rest of the world, Kibsgaard said. There’s an active effort to instill optimism again throughout the organization, he said while speaking Tuesday at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston.
“This has been much deeper and longer than what we’ve seen before,” Kibsgaard said of the bust from 2014 to last year. “It has taken a toll on the organization.”
While the 70,000 job loss number is shocking, Schlumberger’s employee headcount has only fallen from a mid-2014 peak of 126,000 workers to about 100,000 people today. That’s because of some recent new hiring as well as the acquisitions of big companies like Houston-based Cameron International and, most recently, Weatherford International’s hydraulic fracturing business in the U.S.
Last year was strong in the U.S., Kibsgaard said, and 2018 is showing signs of at least small growth in most of the world. “There was significant growth in activity, particularly in fracking, in 2017,” he said.
More global investments are needed to support oil demand growth, he said.
“The market is making big bets on U.S. shale,” Kibsgaard said, arguing that the world is banking on the U.S. to fuel global growth in the short term. “The long-cycle investments are still very very low.”
Schlumberger has worked to cut back on costs while relying more on software and automation. The company is in the process of launching its latest land rig drilling system that’s more digitized and automated, which Schlumberger has referred to as the “Rig of the Future.”
The company opened its Silicon Valley-based Software Technology Innovation Center in 2014.
“To be connected to that, even though we’re in the oil and gas industry, is a bit cool,” Kibsgaard said.
This article first appeared on the Houston Chronicle – an Energy Voice content partner. For more from the Houston Chronicle click here.
Recommended for you
