by Tsvetana Paraskova at Oil Price
- For the fourth quarter, SLB sees E&P companies exhausting their budgets for U.S. onshore drilling.
- SLB CEO: Offshore drilling and developments will be the growth engine of the industry going forward.
- Smaller service providers are facing a more challenging U.S. market as slowing activity is pressuring their pricing.
Oil companies are growing increasingly cautious on spending on production growth amid concerns about an oversupplied market and oil prices lower than at last year’s levels.
That’s one of the messages from SLB, the world’s biggest oilfield services provider, which flagged continued softness in the short-cycle market, especially in U.S. shale, in its Q3 results release.
Offshore and other long-cycle spending, which tends to be more resilient to oil price fluctuations, remains relatively strong. But U.S. activity and spending are falling and are set to keep that trend of flattish or slightly lower levels next year, executives at SLB, formerly Schlumberger, said on the company’s earnings call last week.
International Offshore Driving Growth…