Schlumberger

For other uses, see Schlumberger (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Schulenburg, Texas.

Schlumberger Limited

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Type	Public (NYSE: SLB)
Industry	Oilfield services
Founded	1926
Headquarters	Operates in 80+ countries. Incorporated in the Netherlands Antilles with principal offices in Houston, Paris and The Hague.
Key people	Chairman and CEO: Andrew Gould COO: Paal Kibsgaard CFO: Simon Ayat
Products	Oil field services
Revenue	▲ US$22.70 Billion (FY 2009)
Operating income	▲ US$5.31 Billion (FY 2009)
Net income	▲ US$3.16 Billion (FY 2009)
Employees	83,000+
Website	www.slb.com

Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB) (French pronunciation: [ʃlœ̃bɛʁʒe]; English: /ˌslʌmbərˈʒeɪ/ (variable)) is the world's largest oilfield services corporation with operations in approximately 80 countries. Currently based in Houston, Texas, Schlumberger was founded in 1926 by French brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger. The company recorded the first-ever electrical resistivity well log in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, France in 1927. Schlumberger now supplies the petroleum industry with services such as seismic acquisition and processing, formation evaluation, well testing and directional drilling, well cementing and stimulation, artificial lift, well completions and consulting, and software and information management. The company is also involved in the groundwater extraction and carbon capture and storage industries. Schlumberger has roughly 77,000 employees of more than 140 nationalities.

History

File:SchlumbergerSolutionsCenterHoustonTX.JPG

The headquarters of Schlumberger in Houston

File:SchlumbergerComplexSugarLAndTX.JPG

Schlumberger complex in Sugar Land, Texas

In 1926, French engineers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger founded the Société de Prospection Électrique (French: Electric Prospecting Company). The 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 Société quickly expanded, logging its first well in the U.S. in 1929, in Kern County, California. In 1934, the Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation was founded in Houston, later evolving into Schlumberger Well Services, and finally Schlumberger Wireline & Testing; the company consolidated its global headquarters in Houston in 1940. 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 in Curaçao as a holding company for all Schlumberger businesses, which by now included American testing and production company Johnston Testers.

Over the next years, Schlumberger continued to expand its operations and purchase competitors. 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. 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.

File:Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre 02.jpg

The Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners was opened in 1985.

Schlumberger established the first international data links with e-mail in 1981. In 1983, Schlumberger opened their Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, England.

The SEDCO drilling rig company and half of Dowell of North America were acquired in 1984, 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.

In the 1970s its top executives in North America were relocated to New York City.

Schlumberger's Information Network, or SINet, launched in 1985, is the world's second largest internal corporate network and the first commercial ARPANet-based intranet.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, Schlumberger completed their 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. In 1991, Schlumberger acquired PRAKLA-SEISMOS, and pioneered the use of geosteering to plan the drill path in horizontal wells.^{[citation needed]}

Schlumberger acquired the software company GeoQuest Systems, Inc. in 1992. With the purchase came the conversion of SINet to TCP/IP and www capability. in 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 plc resulted with the creation of Omnes, which then handled all of Schlumberger's internal IT business. Oilphase and Camco International were also purchased.

Schlumberger moved its Houston-area offices from 5000 Gulf Freeway to a 200-acre (0.81 km²) campus at 300 Schlumberger Drive in Sugar Land, Texas in 1995.

In 1999, Schlumberger and Smith International created a joint venture, M-I L.L.C., the world's largest drilling fluids (or 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.

The joint venture with Cable & Wireless was dissolved with Schlumberger keeping the majority of Omnes IT Operations and running it as a separate unit before merging it with Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS) and later Oilfield Services.

In 2000, the Geco-Prakla division was merged with Western Geophysical to create the seismic contracting company WesternGeco, of which Schlumberger held a 70% stake, the remaining 30% belonging to competitor Baker Hughes. Under new business policy, the company got rid of its famous brand names in the oilfield service industry viz, Anadrill, Dowell, GeoQuest, Geco-Prakla, Wireline & Testing in order to promote and sell its oil and gas services under the single trading name of Schlumberger Oilfield Services (OFS). Sedco Forex was spun off, and merged with Transocean Drilling company in 2000.

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.

In 2004, U.S. Federal investigators found that Schlumberger's WesternGeco subsidiary had committed visa fraud 421 times between 2000 and 2004, knowingly having its foreign employees file fraudulent applications for U.S. work visas; these illegal aliens were working on U.S.-owned ships in U.S. territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico. WesternGeco was fined US$18 million and invoiced $1.6 million for the cost of the investigation.

On January 10, 2005 Schlumberger purchased Waterloo Hydrogeologic, which was followed by several other groundwater industry related companies, such as Westbay Instruments, and Van Essen Instruments.

In late 2006, the corporate head office moved from New York to Houston in the Uptown District–area. In 2006, a 2 for 1 stock split was announced, effective as of March 1, 2006.

On April 21, 2006, Schlumberger purchased the remaining 30% of WesternGeco from Baker Hughes for US$2.4 billion.

In 2006, the Schlumberger-Doll Research center was relocated to a newly built new research facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts to replace the Ridgefield, Connecticut research center. The move was completed at the end of 2006. The new facility joins the other research centers operated by the company in Cambridge, England; Moscow, Russia; Stavanger, Norway; and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

On February 21, 2010, it announced the acquisition of Smith International in an all stock deal valued at $11.3 billion. The sale price is 45.84-a-share price was 37.5 percent higher than Smith closing price on February 18, 2010. The deal is the biggest acquisition in Schlumberger history. If the merger goes through, some jobs in the local corporate offices could be lost due to redundancy.

On February 25, 2010, Schlumberger announced plans to acquire Geoservices, a French-based company specializing in energy services, in a deal valued at $1.1 billion, including debt.

Divisions and subsidiaries

• Schlumberger Business Consulting (SBC) is the company's management consultancy arm. Based in Paris, France, it specializes in the oil and gas exploration and production industry. The division was created in 2004, sponsored by Schlumberger CEO Andrew Gould. The division has seen rapid growth since its birth, and as of 2008 is a market leader in upstream management consulting.

Business

Operating revenue in 2009 was US$22.70 billion with a market capitalization as of 17 February 2010, of US$78.08 billion. Schlumberger is a Fortune Global 500 company.

Environmental record

Schlumberger has set up planning models and hired experts to decrease damage to the environment. With the help of experts, Schlumberger has set up systems such as OneSTEP, to reduce damage, use fewer chemicals, and decreasing costs by cutting back on equipment.

To diminish the equipment on sites and thus the resulting effect on the ground, Schlumberger as well as Cisco Systems and Intel Team have created a digital oilfield. The use of wireless service will enable workers to drill using communication through the wireless sensors.

In 2006, Schlumberger agreed to pay $11.8 million to federal and state agencies for damaging a fishery and a natural habitat. The cause of the problem was from polychlorinated biphenyls released into the environment by Sangamo-Weston from 1955 to 1987. Schlumberger assumed the liabilities of Sangamo associated with the PCB contamination in a series of corporate transactions that took place between 1990 and 2003. In addition to paying for a solution to this problem, the company is also using $8 to $10 million to remove hydroelectric dams in Twelve Mile Creek and restore the stream.

In January of the same year, a radioactive canister owned by Schlumberger was discovered in the Western Australian outback desert. It was later revealed that the canister had been lost on 18 November 2005, when the improperly secured container fell off the trailer it was being transported on. Schlumberger did not notify the Western Australian government until 15 December 2005, and the Department of Health did not warn the public for another week.

See also

• List of oilfield service companies

External links

• Schlumberger
• Schlumberger from the Handbook of Texas Online
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