The largest of the oilfield services contingent reported its second-quarter earnings on Friday, and while the results were hardly impressive -- or surprising -- Schlumberger
For the quarter, the company reported net income of $613 million, or $0.51 a share, something of a shadow of the $1.42 billion, or $1.16 a share, when hydrocarbon prices were marching toward their peak last year. If you disregard one-time items, however, the bottom line turned to $0.68 a share, beating $0.63-a-share consensus expectations. Revenues were down 18% to $5.53 billion.
Schlumberger operates through two units. Its oilfield services segment, which generates about 90% of its business, saw revenues decline about 18% from a year ago. And its smaller WesternGeco unit, which is primarily involved in seismic activities, generated 17% lower revenues than in the comparable quarter in 2008.
As I've told Fools previously, if you want to get a handle on the status of various components of the global energy industry, simply read Schlumberger's quarterly earnings release. In addition to superbly recapping the global energy scene, the company does a yeoman's job of describing a variety of ways in which its technologies have been applied to worldwide exploration and production challenges.
For instance, as Halliburton
Technologically, Schlumberger noted that "A world record formation pressure-while-drilling job has been run in a deepwater Chevron
We'll get a broader picture of the worldwide energy picture as the likes of ExxonMobil
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