Amid a disastrous Q1 and an even worse outlook for the rest of the year as oil prices in their core North America market collapse to single digits or worse, oilfield services firms are looking to the Middle East to provide what Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch calls a “pocket of resilience.”
Kicking off the ‘big oil’ Q1 earnings season on 17 April, the CEO of the leading global oil services firm singled out the surge in activity for Qatar’s “long-term gas development” as a key opportunity for the remainder of 2020. Given the “very strong market position” Schlumberger enjoys in Qatar, “we will exploit and leverage this during the second quarter… trying to position our performance to get the most out of the activity,” Mr Le Peuch says. Qatar last month began a giant 80-well drilling campaign to fuel a 33mn t/y increase in LNG capacity (MEES, 17 April). (CONTINUED - 1749 WORDS)
