re: Schlumberger - Let's talk about it

SLB, just like Halliburton and a couple of others gets a nice chunk of their revenue in North America in the last few years from well services. They were absolutely killing operators along with the other service companies pumping frac jobs while the gas drilling boom was in full swing. Mostly all of the gas rigs have gone to the Eagle Ford, Bakken, Mississippian Lime, and oil plays. Now with rig count hitting a plateau and maybe dropping some they have had to scale back their aggressive pricing. We will probably see some kind of rig decline which is likely to continue until gas prices can eclipse 4.50 - 5.00 as most of the operators in the oil plays have plenty of rigs currently and there are still a few holdouts in the Marcellus and elsewhere. Expect the oil services revenue to decline for SLB and others until this improves.