Schlumberger

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if you follow me on Twitter, you know I can be a bit ranty on there. It's where pre-coffee, bitchy morning Amy lives, what can I say? But some subjects really only merit rants and :{this is one of them:(style="font-weight:700"):}:: the increasing prevalence of fossil fuel ads on climate newsletters and other sorts of climate verticals.

Fossil fuel companies haven't advertised their actual products since around the late 1960s when PR genius Herb Schmertz at Mobil came up with what he called "affinity-of-purpose" marketing.Actually American Express got their slightly earlier with "cause marketing," a fact Schmertz admitted with good humor, regularly mocking his own less-catchy label. Of course it was all yet another rebrand for propaganda. Because what Schmertz was talking about, and creating for his company, were ads and campaigns that said nothing about oil or gas at all. Instead, they were advertorials that pushed the company's policy positions, or TV shows that just positioned Mobil next to highbrow content (Masterpiece Theater, yes, but also lots of other PBS shows). Today, all of the fossil fuel companies do this, whether it's Chevron pushing "renewable biogas" in the newly launched Semafor newsletter, or Schlumberger sharing a mealy-mouthed message about the world changing and the need for "sustainable energy" in the Protocol newsletter.

The Schlumberger campaign is a really good example of why it's all so problematic, and why there's suddenly so much of it.

First off, they've thrown off the name Schlumberger in favor of the completely unknown SLB. Hiding in the shadows for years as a favorite oil field services partner of ExxonMobil's, Schlumberger has become more visible recently. Extinction Rebellion Cambridge's Schlumberger Out campaign, for example, named them explicitly as a company Cambridge University shouldn't be taking research funding from. Just this week, activists blocked the Schlumberger building on Cambridge's campus with a giant Alice in Wonderland teapot. A spokesperson for the group, Violet, said the intention was "to highlight the absurdity of the situation. This building is specifically designed to research and develop new drilling techniques, yet the International Energy Agency says there can be no new oil and gas fields if we are to keep to 1.5˚C of warming, something the University of Cambridge has committed to."

Good time to become SLB! The change happened yesterday—at the same timeas the protest. Schlumberger even changed its name on LinkedIn, that's how you know it's serious! They are now a "global technology company, driving energy innovation for a balanced project." Wow, who are the ad whizzes who came up with that one? Well, we know actually, because LinkedIn. And also because the geniuses over at Clean Creatives will answer questions like "When did Schlumberger become SLB, and who did that brand work?" in a matter of minutes.

Flavia Barbat, brand editor-in-chief for Schlumberger and editor-in-chief at Branding magazine, :{published a celebratory post yesterday,:(style="font-weight:700"):}: noting: "While it's easy to criticize and troll, it's hard to take responsibility for your actions and the education of others."

Okay, let's take a look at what "taking responsibility for your actions" translates to for a multinational oilfield services company.

[ad pix]One of schlub's ads in the Protocol newsletter

That's a whole lotta passive voice in service of taking responsibility, Flavia! The world is just changing, all on its own, the scales are imablanced, "many are feeling the effects." Indeed!

In the comments, she gives kudos to the Brandpie team for doing a "fantastic job." Brandpie calls itselfan "an independent consultancy specializing in purpose-driven transformation." Purposes, like...increasing profits for the fossil fuel industry?

According to Flavia, "SLB" (I believe it's pronounced "schlub") is "investing in ensuring that the wider population beyond their industry's walls have access to the right information when it comes to energy demand and a truly sustainable way of meeting it."

If that sounds like it came right out of a 1990s industry presentation on the importance of educating the public about a balanced approach to energy, well...

[pix def of lit]This is a 1990s industry presentation on the importance of educating the public about "balanced" energy solutions.

All jokes aside...who is Schlumberger to decide what the "right information" is on energy, climate, and that old canard "sustainability"? And why on earth would any outlet that's decided to invest in climate coverage platform that drivel?

We covered :{the fossil-free research movement :(style="font-weight:700"):}:last week. In the course of reporting that story, I asked Connor Chung, with Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, what he thought about a common response to the call for universities to stop taking research funding from fossil fuel companies: it's not like there's a giant pot of money waiting in the wings to replace fossil fuel funding, what if saying no to oil companies means less climate research overall?

"We'r okay with that," he said. "I think it's better to have less research than to have compromised research."

Josh Penrose, one of the organizers of Schlumberger Out at Cambridge, had a similar take. "I think they should not have a seat at the table because they're a company whose business model is diametrically opposed to the science-based climate action that we need at the moment," he said. "And it's just wrong to endow them with the power to influence such a transition."

I'm starting to feel the same way about media. Does it really benefit anyone if we have more climate sections on websites and in newspapers, and more climate newsletters, and more climate podcasts, if they're all sponsored by the industry? Wrapped in propaganda about changing world and the need for a balanced-energy approach, or outright lies about the potential of carbon capture or algae biofuels or biogas? I think it might actually do more good if there were fewer platforms for fossil proganada, even if it meant slightly less climate coverage.

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/where-there-is-oil-and-gas-there-is-schlumberger

no lnx gff

ubiquitous in fossil fuel operations across the world, has more staff than Google, turns over more than Goldman Sachs, and is worth more than McDonald’s – yet you won’t have heard of it. Meet the oil world’s most secretive operator

James Ball and Harry Davies

Mon 18 May 2015

In the dying hours of a high-level conference on the banks of the Thames late in April, two oil executives are sitting patiently waiting on faded leather chairs in the lobby of a five-star Tower Bridge hotel, briefcases, architects’ plans and a folded flipchart pad at their feet.

The two bespectacled executives, looking much like soberly-suited bank managers, soon disappear into a private room to meet with Dr Abdullahi Haider, a senior adviser to the Somalian government, and a Canadian middleman, emerging an hour or so later.

Somalia could be one of the great untapped sources of offshore oil, if someone can secure a deal to find and extract it, and if anyone can, it’s the company these men work for.

The African nation is one of the most politically unstable, unsafe, and corrupt countries in the world, one of the toughest places for any business to think of operating.

But that is what Schlumberger – the biggest company you’ve never heard of – do, if the rewards are great enough.

Schlumberger were the “gold” sponsors of the conference, a two-day event attracting around a 100 delegates to discuss how to unlock Somalia’s potentially vast, and so far untapped, oil and gas reserves.

The contents of the four men’s discussions as the conference organisers packed up around them, and of their tubes of plans, remain confidential. The executives, characteristically of the secretive oil giant, declined to tell The Guardian what they had discussed.

Schlumberger employs more than 100,000 people finding, scoping, and drilling as much oil and gas as possible from 85 countries across the world. With revenues of $48bn (£30bn) a year and a valuation in excess of $116bn (£75bn), it has more staff than Google, turns over more than Goldman Sachs, and is worth more than McDonald’s.

It works with every major international oil company, and directly for most of the petrostates – including Saudi Arabia, Libya, Russia and Turkmenistan. It operates in the most difficult areas, whether politically, logistically, or technologically, and it is a world leader in the technologies required to get fossil fuels out of the ground – with 36,000 patented ways to help its clients do just that.And it does all of this while staying well out of the limelight.

But with a plea deal with the US authorities finalised at the end of last month, Schlumberger set a corporate record it would probably prefer not to be noticed: receiving the largest corporate criminal fine for sanctions violations in US history.

Its crime, to which it pled guilty, was to involve its US staff in sanctions-busting transactions with both Iran and Sudan, and for its (unsuccessful) attempts to mask such transactions from the authorities.

Schlumberger is now required to pay $155m in criminal fines, forfeit $77.5m in earnings, and undergo three years of corporate probation, the business world’s answer to a yellow card. But for a $48bn-a-year business, which made $208m profit from Iran in 2012 alone, such a fine is just a drop in the oil well. The day the deal was struck, Schlumberger shares actually rose almost 2%, a visible sign investors saw the punishment as little more than a slap on the wrist.

But the deal shines unprecedented light on some of the inner workings of a company central to drilling out fossil fuels right across the planet.

Schlumberger doesn’t actually own any oil or gas fields itself, meaning it was not on the Guardian’s divestment list of 200 companies as part of its “Keep it in the ground” campaign – but as perhaps the most sophisticated oilfields services company on the planet, it is key to deep-sea drilling, arctic exploration, re-fracking (a bid to “stimulate” a dwindling fracking site to boost its production) and more, and works with many of the nationally-owned oil companies that hold most of the world’s reserves.

An Iranian woman walks at South Pars the gas field near the southern Iranian port of Assalouyeh, Iran, on Jan. 22, 2014. The South Pars/North Dome field is a natural gas condensate field located in the Persian Gulf. It is the world's largest gas field, shared between Iran and Qatar. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the field holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet (51 trillion cubic meters) of in-situ natural gas and some 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensate. Iran recently planed to attract 70 billion U.S. dollars for investments in its oil and gas industry.

It does all this with a huge £114m investment from the Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation Trust also holds a shareholding of more than $3m in the company. Schlumberger may lack the public profile of its rival in the field, Halliburton – which became notorious among campaigners in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, especially through its ties to controversial former US vice-president Dick Cheney – but it’s bigger than it by far. Schlumberger is valued at almost three times its US-owned rival, and has around 35,000 more staff.

Schlumberger, founded in 1926 by two French brothers as a prospecting company, works under the radar. Where its better-known but smaller rivals openly lobby, donate to political parties, and even hire big-name politicians, Schlumberger does not. The results show in overage: Halliburton appeared in more than 1,700 articles in the British press in the last decade. Schlumberger is in just 500, mostly short pieces tucked away on the business pages.

One of Schlumberger’s tricks of the trade is its near-statelessness. Unlike Halliburton, it is not US-owned. Despite being a publicly listed company both in the US and the UK, and having “headquarters” in London (a sleek glass skyscraper just yards from Buckingham Palace), Paris, The Hague and Houston, Schlumberger is formally incorporated in Curaçao, a Caribbean offshore haven with ties to the Netherlands.

The company’s complex structure, which routes its operating companies through subsidiaries in the Netherlands, British Virgin Islands and Panama, often works in its favour. One such upside was for years that Schlumberger was able to operate in Iran and Sudan, despite US sanctions, because it wasn’t a US company, and so it did – including directly for the National Iranian Oil Company.

The key condition was that no US citizens or staff on US soil must be involved in the contracts. Unfortunately for Schlumberger, the company didn’t manage to keep to those terms – and the US authorities found out, and struck.

Documents filed by the Department of Justice, and accepted by Schlumberger through its guilty plea, set out how the US sanctions rules were repeatedly and deliberately breached.

Staff within the US, the document sets out, approved capital spend – money for equipment and other needs – against the terms of US sanctions. The DoJ document also sets out the steps staffmembers took to try to cover their tracks, including creating covernames – such as referring to Sudan as “Southern Egypt” – for the countries concerned when applying for funds.

“[E]mails often identified Iran and/or Sudan, through the use of code words,” the document states. “For example, D&M [drilling & measurements, a division within Schlumberger] personnel in MEA [Middle East and East Asia] generally referred to Iran as “Northern Gulf” and Sudan as “Southern Egypt” … these funds were approved by D&M personnel in the United States even though they were made by or on behalf of Iran or Sudan.”

One email exchange between Schlumberger staff highlights staff taking steps to avoid sending anything with the barred country named to US soil. An email to Texas notes “I have purposely not sent additional files as they refer to “Southern Egypt” by name.”

The documents also detail Schlumberger staff modifying country codes to avoid references to Iran and Sudan, as well as arranging equipment “swaps” to facilitate US-made equipment getting to sites in Iran and Sudan, by virtue of sending new equipment to permitted countries (like Jordan), who didn’t need it, so as to allow their second-hand machinery to be sent on to the barred nations. “This is to help out Sudan again with their embargo” one employee noted in an email arranging one of the deals.

Despite its substantial fine and probation, which includes a prohibition on Schlumberger operating in Iran and Sudan (it has now exited both), analysts regard the issue as largely having passed – leaving the company free to do as it will elsewhere.

“Everyone’s known the company, Schlumberger, because it’s sort of dual-citizenship … has allowed them to operate in certain areas, which has given them an advantage over certain companies and areas, and Iran was one of them,” explains David Anderson, oil services and equipment analyst at Barclays. “They operated in the country and they paid the fine.”

For the oil analysts, Schlumberger’s sanctions breaches are a thing of the past, an embarrassing moment best forgotten. The company might no longer be able to trade in Iran and Sudan, but is free to continue its operations in some of the world’s most difficult places to work.

Schlumberger has proven itself unafraid of contentious customers, with operations in autocratic states widely criticised by human rights groups and western governments. The company’s clients have included Libya, Burma, Turkmenistan, Chad and Angola.

Documents disclosed by WikiLeaks in 2011 also shed light on the US State Department’s views on some of Schlumberger’s operations at the time, and highlight its presence in some of the most difficult areas in which to operate.

The US embassy in Turkmenistan noted the company had hired a local fixer – an “ombudsman” in their parlance – to reduce “harassment and extortion by local police”, which had included dubious “fines”, tax audits, and even deportation of employees for fratenising with Turkmen women, a serious no-no in the draconian state.

[RIG 292, in Kome 5, oil extraction site of the American company Esso, in the region of Doba, Eastern Logone region. Two workers from Weatherford Company (red boiler suit) and a worker from Schlumberger Company (blue boiler suit), Esso contractors, during the installation of underground water pumps. Chadian oil is heavy, with low pressure and can not spout up naturally. To extract it, water has to be sent underground.]

Elsewhere, Schlumberger had to battle hostage takings and raids in Nigeria – where the company “tripled the amount spent on security so it now totaled 55% of its budget”.

However, the rewards to the oilfield services companies – Schlumberger and its smaller rivals – for being willing to work where others fear to tread were also clear. In Kuwait Schlumberger and its rivals had “almost all” of the fieldwork for the national oil company, while in the UAE a State Department official remarked in 2005 that “Halliburton, Baker-Atlas, Schlumberger and other service providers act as an oligopoly and enjoy exceedingly large profit margins”.

The core of Schlumberger’s indispensability to its customer base across the world is its specialism in extracting the most fossil fuels possible. Where its rivals are often said to compete on low costs, Schlumberger offers up technical expertise to seek out and grab every drop of oil, or puff of gas.

“You could almost say Schlumberger is the Apple of the oil fields, the high tech company, they’re ubiquitous,” explains Robert MacKenzie, an analyst at Iberia Capital Partners and a former employee of Schlumberger.

“If you’re trying to develop a field and you want the best you hire Schlumberger. If you’re not certain how to work it and you want someone to help figure out how you develop it you call Schlumberger. They have driven many technology advances in the industry in the past and they continue to do that.”

Schlumberger’s technological dominance is reflected in its formidable patent portfolio. A search on Espacenet, an international database operated by the European Patent Office, for Schlumberger reveals more than 36,000 patents linked to the firm. The same search for Halliburton gives 25,000, while Baker Hughes, the third-largest in the sector has 20,000.

“Their technology is real, it’s legitimate and it is certainly one of the hallmarks of the company,” says Barclays’ David Anderson, who described Schlumberger’s patent portfolio as the company’s “calling card” since its inception. It certainly keeps the company profitable: Schlumberger’s net income topped $5bn (£3.2bn) in 2014, and the company has historically enjoyed better profit margins than its rivals.

The company is keen to tout its technological edge, with Patrick Schorn, one of the company’s presidents, telling an energy conference in December 2014 that Schlumberger had been granted 689 patents in 2013 – 166% more than just five years before, with Schorn showcasing technologies to boost fracking, and to scope out the full extent of hard-to-analyse oil reservoirs.

Schlumberger then uses this R&D to make its money making whole new types of drilling possible – allowing big western oil and gas companies, plus state-owned enterprises to extract exactly the reserves environmental campaigners insist must stay in the ground.

“The magnitude of deepwater reserves and production potential is simply too large for the industry to ignore,” chief executive Paul Kibsgaard told an industry audience earlier this year.

His company’s promotion material push the same message. “[N]o company can match our on-going investment in deepwater R&D,” one 2014 brochure pledged, before referring to the company’s “overwhelming market position” in ultra-deepwater rigs, a risky and controversial form of extraction, particularly in the wake of the very public Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Schlumberger’s fossil-fuel reliance extends in other ways. The company has recently started offering its refracking customers new, risk-free deals, where they pay no revenue unless Schlumberger increases their production beyond a certain level, at which point they take a share, in a sense, making them an oil company in all but name – the oil indiustry’s version of the ambulance chaser’s “no win, no fee” offer.

The reliance of the business on fossil fuel extraction is tacitly, if briefly, acknowledged in a section of the company’s official annual filings from 2012, touching on significant potential risks to the business. In the guarded language of the corporate world, it warns “demand for our products and services could be reduced by changes in governmental regulations or in the law”.

“Some international, national and state governments and agencies are currently evaluating and promulgating climate-related legislation and regulations that are focused on restricting greenhouse gas emissions,” the section then explains.

“Such legislation … may significantly curtail demand for and production of fossil fuels such as oil and gas in areas of the world where our customers operate and thus adversely affect future demand for our services, which may in turn adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.”

For now, though, the company is still keen and willing to look to untapped frontiers of fossil fuel extraction, with the Arctic being one of the key targets in its sights – where they were behind a major oil discovery in Russia’s icy Kara Sea last year.

And despite its recent run-in with the US over sanctions, it is according to a Bloomberg report still able to work with Russia in the Arctic extraction, despite US sanctions. But with three years of corporate probation to serve, it is sure to be characteristically more careful this time to stay out of the headlines.

The Guardian contacted Schlumberger five days prior to publication in order to provide the company an opportunity to respond to matters raised in this article. At the time of publication, 72 hours after the an initial deadline for comment, Schlumberger was yet to respond to the Guardian’s email and questions, other than pointing to a recent US DoJ press release relating to the final judgement in the US sanctions case.

The elusive chief executive

Paal Kibsgaard

Schlumberger’s Norwegian chief executive and chairman Paal Kibsgaard. Photograph: Audun Braastad/Scanpix

Paal Kibsgaard keeps a low profile. Unlike other top executives in the oil industry, Schlumberger’s Norwegian chief executive and chairman manages to avoid the public eye.

There are few interviews with the press and only a brief biography appears on the company’s website with career highlights. Made chief executive in 2011 – and anointed as chairman in April – Kibsgaard joined the firm in 1997 as an engineer in Saudi Arabia and worked his way through company ranks.

While relatively little may be known about Kibsgaard, he is among the highest paid executives in the US. Last year his total pay packet, including shares and options, hit almost $17m – ahead of Tim Cook of Apple and the chief executives of Nike and Ford, according to data compiled by Equilar.

Kibsgaard sits at the helm of a truly global operation, and in 2013 the 47-year-old from Ålesund, a picturesque port town set among snow-glazed mountains on Norway’s west coast, was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the 500 “most powerful people on the planet”.

Earlier this year, Kibsgaard received a medal from another of the world’s most powerful people: Vladimir Putin. In a decree signed by the Russian president, Kibsgaard was awarded the “Order of Friendship” medal for Schlumberger’s contribution to a major discovery in the Russian Arctic.

Last month, Kibsgaard – believed to be the highest paid Norwegian in the world – proved to be a ruthless operator, slashing Schlumberger’s workforce by 15% in response to the fall in oil prices. Meanwhile, investors remain supportive of Kibsgaard – presumably thanks to extra generous dividend increases since he took the top job.

In a rare interview last year, Kibsgaard spoke to financial magazine Barron’s about his ambitions for Schlumberger and offered an ambitious vision. “I don’t think we should focus on only being the best company in our industry,” he said. “We have the potential to be the best-run company in the world, and that’s what we are trying to do.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlumberger

schlumberger Limited (French: [ʃlum.bɛʁˈʒe, ʃlœ̃-]) is an oilfield services company.^[2][3] Schlumberger employees represent more than 140 nationalities working in more than 120 countries.^[4] Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague.^[5]

Schlumberger is the world’s largest offshore drilling company. It is the biggest offshore drilling contractor (in terms of revenue) in the world.^[6]

Schlumberger is incorporated in Willemstad, Curaçao as Schlumberger N.V.^[7] and trades on the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris, the London Stock Exchange and SIX Swiss Exchange.^[8] Schlumberger is a Fortune Global 500 company, ranked 287 in 2016,^[9] and also listed in Forbes Global 2000, ranked 176 in 2016.^[10]

History

This Houston building, as of 2015, houses the Schlumberger U.S. executive offices

1938 Schlumberger Corporation Building

Schlumberger complex in Sugar Land, Texas

Schlumberger was founded in 1926 by two brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger from the Alsace region in France as the Electric Prospecting Company (French: Société de prospection électrique). The company recorded the first-ever electrical resistivity well log in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, France in 1927. Today, Schlumberger supplies the petroleum industry with services such as seismic data processing, formation evaluation, well testing and directional drilling, well cementing and stimulation, artificial lift, well completions, flow assurance and consulting, and software and information management. The company is also involved in the groundwater extraction^[11] and carbon capture and storage industries.^[12]

The Schlumberger brothers had experience conducting geophysical surveys in countries such as Romania, Canada, Serbia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the United States. The new company sold electrical-measurement mapping services, and recorded the first-ever electrical resistivity well log in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, France in 1927. The company quickly expanded, logging its first well in the U.S. in 1929, in Kern County, California. In 1935, the Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation was founded in Houston, later evolving into Schlumberger Well Services, and finally Schlumberger Wireline and Testing. Schlumberger invested heavily in research, inaugurating the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center in Ridgefield, Connecticut in 1948, contributing to the development of a number of new logging tools. In 1956, Schlumberger Limited was incorporated as a holding company for all Schlumberger businesses, which by now included American testing and production company Johnston Testers.^[citation ^needed]

Over the years, Schlumberger continued to expand its operations and acquisitions. In 1960, Dowell Schlumberger (50% Schlumberger, 50% Dow Chemical), which specialized in pumping services for the oil industry, was formed. In 1962, Schlumberger Limited became listed on the New York Stock Exchange.^[13] That same year, Schlumberger purchased Daystrom, an electronic instruments manufacturer in South Boston, Virginia which was making furniture by the time the division was sold to Sperry & Hutchinson in 1971.^[14] Schlumberger purchased 50% of Forex in 1964 and merged it with 50% of Languedocienne to create the Neptune Drilling Company. The first computerized reservoir analysis, SARABAND, was introduced in 1970. The remaining 50% of Forex was acquired the following year; Neptune was renamed Forex Neptune Drilling Company. In 1979, Fairchild Camera and Instrument (including Fairchild Semiconductor) became a subsidiary of Schlumberger Limited.

In 1981, Schlumberger established the first international data links with e-mail. In 1983, Schlumberger opened its Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, England.^[15]

In 1984, the SEDCO drilling rig company and half of Dowell of North America were acquired, resulting in the creation of the Anadrill drilling segment, a combination of Dowell and The Analysts' drilling segments. Forex Neptune was merged with SEDCO to create the Sedco Forex Drilling Company the following year, when Schlumberger purchased Merlin and 50% of GECO.^[citation ^needed]

In 1987, Schlumberger completed its purchases of Neptune (North America), Bosco and Cori (Italy), and Allmess (Germany). That same year, National Semiconductor acquired Fairchild Semiconductor from Schlumberger for $122 million.^[16]

In 1991, Schlumberger acquired PRAKLA-SEISMOS, and pioneered the use of geosteering to plan the drill path in horizontal wells.^[citation ^needed]

In 1992, Schlumberger acquired software company GeoQuest Systems. With the purchase came the conversion of SINet to TCP/IP and thus internet capable. In the 1990s Schlumberger bought out the petroleum division, AEG meter, and ECLIPSE reservoir study team Intera Technologies Corp. A joint venture between Schlumberger and Cable & Wireless resulted with the creation of Omnes, which then handled all of Schlumberger's internal IT business. Oilphase and Camco International were also purchased.^[citation ^needed]

In 1999, Schlumberger and Smith International created a joint venture, M-I L.L.C., the world's largest drilling fluids (mud) company. The company consists of 60% Smith International, and 40% Schlumberger. Since the joint venture was prohibited by a 1994 antitrust consent decree barring Smith from selling or combining their fluids business with certain other companies, including Schlumberger, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. found Smith International Inc. and Schlumberger Ltd. guilty of criminal contempt and fined each company $750,000 and placed each company on five years probation. Both companies also agreed to pay a total of $13.1 million, representing a full disgorgement of all of the joint venture's profits during the time the companies were in contempt.^[17]

In 2000, the Geco-Prakla division was merged with Western Geophysical to create the seismic data acquisition and processing contracting company WesternGeco, of which Schlumberger held a 70% stake, the remaining 30% belonging to competitor Baker Hughes. Sedco Forex was spun off, and merged with Transocean Drilling company in 2000.^[citation ^needed]

In 2001, Schlumberger acquired the IT consultancy company Sema plc for $5.2 billion. The company was an Athens 2004 Summer Olympics partner, but Schlumberger's venture into IT consultancy did not pay off, and divestiture of Sema to Atos Origin was completed that year for $1.5 billion. The cards division was divested through an IPO to form Axalto, which later merged with Gemplus to form Gemalto, and the Messaging Solutions unit was spun off and merged with Taral Networks to form Airwide Solutions. In 2003, the Automated Test Equipment group, part of the 1979 Fairchild Semiconductor acquisition, was spun off to NPTest Holding, which later sold it to Credence.^[citation ^needed]

In 2004, Schlumberger Business Consulting was launched and a decade later was acquired by Accenture.^[18]

In 2005, Schlumberger purchased Waterloo Hydrogeologic,^{[19][unreliable} ^source?] which was followed by several other groundwater industry related companies, such as Westbay Instruments, and Van Essen Instruments. Also that year, Schlumberger relocated its U.S. corporate offices from New York to Houston.^[20]

In 2006, Schlumberger purchased the remaining 30% of WesternGeco from Baker Hughes for US$2.4 billion.^[21] Also that year, the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center was relocated to a newly built research facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts to replace the Ridgefield, Connecticut research center. The facility joins the other research centers operated by the company in Cambridge, England; Moscow, Russia; Stavanger, Norway; and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.^[22] In March 2022, Schlumberger stopped investing in its projects in Russia because of International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War.^[23]

In 2010, the acquisition of Smith International in an all-stock deal valued at $11.3 billion was announced. The sale price is 45.84-a-share price was 37.5 percent higher than Smith closing price on 18 February 2010. The deal is the biggest acquisition in Schlumberger history.^[24] The merger was completed on August 27, 2010.^[25] Also announced in 2010 were Schlumberger plans to acquire Geoservices, a French-based company specializing in energy services, in a deal valued at $1.1 billion, including debt.^[26]

In 2014, Schlumberger announced the purchase of the remaining shares of SES Holdings Limited (“Saxon”), a Calgary-based provider of international land drilling services, from First Reserve and certain members of Saxon management. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals. Schlumberger had a minority share in Saxon previously.^[27]

In 2015, Schlumberger was indicted by the US Department of Justice for sanction violations of conducting business in Iran and Sudan; the company was fined $233 million, amounting to the largest fine for sanctions to date.^[28]

In 2015, due to a downturn in the global oil and gas industry, Schlumberger announced 21,000 layoffs accounting for 15% of the company's total workforce.^[29]

In 2015, Schlumberger agreed to acquire oilfield equipment manufacturer Cameron International for $14.8 billion.^[30]

In 2018, Schlumberger announced that WesternGeco would be exiting the seismic data acquisition business, both onshore and offshore, while retaining its multiclient data processing and interpretation segments. This decision followed the bankruptcy filings of several competitors in the seismic services sector.^[31]

Corporate affairs

France

The company has offices in the La Défense business district of Puteaux and in Paris.^[32][33]

United States

Schlumberger maintains a 33-acre (13 ha) campus at the northeast corner of U.S. Highway 90A and Gillingham Lane in Sugar Land, Texas; as of 2017 Schlumberger is the third largest employer in the city. In 2015 Schlumberger announced that it was moving its U.S. corporate headquarters to the Sugar Land facility from its Houston office building. The company plans to build new buildings with a scheduled completion time of late 2017. They include a total of 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²) of Class A office space and an "amenities" building with 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) of space.^[34]

In the 1930s, the North American headquarters were established in Houston. In the 1970s, the company's top executives in North America were relocated to New York City. By 2006, the head office had 50 executives and support staff. By that year the company was moving that office to a building near the Houston Galleria.^[35]

Schlumberger moved its Houston-area offices from 5000 Gulf Freeway in Houston to the Sugar Land campus in 1995.^[36][37][38]

Recognition

In 2009, Newsweek released their "Green Rankings" ^[39] a ranking of the 500 largest corporations on track records on a number of environmental issues. Schlumberger was ranked 118th out of 500 overall, and 3rd out of 31 in their industry. Newsweek remarked that to mitigate global warming Schlumberger has invested in carbon sequestration which involves long-term storage of CO2 and that the company's seismic survey ships are 20% to 25% more fuel-efficient than those of other seismic contractors from using fuels that emit less pollution and towing equipment that creates less drag on the vessels.^[40]

Controversies

Radioactive sources

In 2006, a radioactive canister imported by Schlumberger was recovered in the Western Australian outback desert.^[41] The canister had been lost by the company's transport partner, when the improperly secured container fell off the trailer on which it was being transported.^[42]

In 2010, the Aberdeen Sheriff court fined Schlumberger Oilfield UK £300,000 for losing a radioactive source on the rig floor on the Ensco 101 mobile drilling rig in the North Sea for 4 hours.^[43]

Spills

In 2009, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake Appalachia LLC and Schlumberger Technology Corp. more than $15,500 each for a hydrochloric acid spill in February 2009 at Chesapeake's Chancellor natural gas well site in Asylum Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Officials said the leak did not contaminate groundwater.^[44]

PCB contamination

In 2006, as the current owner of a facility in Pickens, South Carolina, Schlumberger agreed to pay $11.8 million to federal and state agencies for a problem caused by the previous owner, Sangamo-Weston, a capacitor manufacturing plant.^[45] The cause of the problem was from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) released into the environment by Sangamo-Weston from 1955 to 1987. According to the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, an additional agreement by Schlumberger to purchase and remove dams will directly improve the Twelvemile Creek, South Carolina ecosystem and provide significant environmental benefits for the affected communities.^[46]

Deepwater Horizon

Main articles: Deepwater Horizon explosion and Deepwater Horizon oil spill

In 2010, Schlumberger was contracted to perform wireline logging on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. On the day of the explosion, the Schlumberger crew was supposed to perform a cement evaluation test, but the test was cancelled and the crew was released by BP to leave the rig on the same day.^[47][48] The cost-cutting decision to cancel the test is dramatized in the subsequent film by Peter Berg.

Business with Iran and Sudan

In 2015, Schlumberger pled guilty to violating U.S. sanctions related to Iran and Sudan and agreed to pay a $237M penalty.^[49]

Sexual Harassment

In 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed against Schlumberger, alleging a culture of sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.^[50] According to the company's pay-gap report for 2018, women composed a mere 5.4% of field roles and 16.2% of roles in the full company. The lawsuit alleges that males regularly documented female co-workers and flaunted them on public forums. Male colleagues would also encourage other men to break into the plaintiff's room at night and stonewall her if she did not consent to sexual activity. The lawsuit also outlines instances of "sexist and hostile comments," and one instance in which the plaintiff was groped. Women who complain to HR are told it's all just "oil field talk" and are subsequently ignored. When the plaintiff kept complaining, Schlumberger allegedly terminated the plaintiff. Women who spoke with the Texas Observer describe a culture of silence, where women stay silent for fear of being fired in the high turnover company.^[51]

References

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