Oil Services Firms See Mideast Driving Growth, For 2023 And Beyond

27 Jan 2023 Issue: 66 / 4 By: James Cockayne

The big three global oilfield services firms all see the Middle East, and to a lesser extent the global offshore, as driving revenue growth in 2023. Whilst global upstream spending remains restrained compared to previous up-cycles, having cut costs they are eying multiple years of bumper revenue.

With the ‘Big 3’ global oilfield services companies – SLB (formerly Schlumberger), Baker Hughes and Halliburton – all reporting their 2022 results over the past week, their consensus forecast is that global upstream spending will grow by 15% for 2023. But Mideast spending is set to grow much more, driven by massive capacity expansion programs in the UAE (MEES, 27 January), Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“We are poised to certainly have record revenue in Middle East during this cycle, and eclipse the previous 2014 peak [of $11.9bn] by a margin,” SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch told his firm’s 20 January earnings call. Already for 4Q 2022, SLB’s ‘Mideast and Asia’ revenue, at $2.51bn, was just shy of the previous Q4 2019 peak of $2.67bn. (CONTINUED - 1403 WORDS)