All posts tagged "schlumberger"

One notepad is all that it takes.

The oilfield is bloody cruel.

How would you feel when you are lifting boxes and moving pipes with a 30-odd year old laborer from the sub-continent, when you know you draw in more than 50 times his salary? Well, I feel pained. As the both of us toil away in the Arabian sun, taking breaks over chai and cursing the sytem; I can see the pain in his eyes. The pain of getting to see his wife and children once every 2 years for a couple of weeks; sending almost everything that he earns to his family back home and being content with a laugh or two with a few folks over a game of cards.

All that it took for me to sweep that pain off his eyes for a few seconds, was me giving him a new hard-bound pocket notepad that I’d got myself from the store. That’s all it took to make him happy again.

It most definitely wasn’t the tiny notepad. It was just the fact that he felt a sense of belonging to the place he worked for, a feeling that people cared about him and his work.

All that it takes to make your crew take pride in their work, is a little tap on the shoulder.

“I find it intriguing how we have spent the past 80 years learning how to extract hydrocarbons from reservoirs, and now we are applying much of that expertise to use deep salt water aquifers to put carbon back into the ground, where it came from.”

—David White, President of Schlumberger Carbon Services talking about carbon sequestration technologies.

“…the key point here is that it’s refreshing to have in Andrew Gould someone who will tell it like it is regarding the world of oil and gas. His knowledge and candor are among the keys to Schlumberger’s ongoing status as the star of the oilfield services show.”

—

Motley Fool

Candor is probably one of the biggest assets of a CEO.

25 hours

And that’s what it takes to get back in love with life. With everything.

25 hours ago, a blue-and white 12-foot long container bearing the Schlumberger logo arrived on this offshore rig. As I watched the container being hauled aboard, the client told me that I need to get my equipment ready in 8 hours. The standard time it takes is 12 hours, if everything is smooth. Assuring him that I’ll try my best, I get to work. The humidity is at a staggering high, and sweat drops from my brow hit the ground one-every-second. No kidding. No exaggeration. One drop a second. I swear.

And Murphy gives me a call, and my tools begin to give up on me. Six hours down, the shit had hit the fan. I was on the brink of selling out. And to cut a long story short, I managed to set everything up in 8.5 hours. One cup of tea. One bottle of water. One can of apple juice. That was it.

Awesome breakfast, and 12 hours of sleep. Two hours in front of Gmail.

Now, I realize how much I love my work. For the sheer unpredicatibility. For making me realize the value of time. For that moment when I stand on the ledge of the offshore rig, watching the vast sea, the mammoth mast behind me, the noise of people drilling for oil, and my two hands bearing smudges of that black gold.

I’m cheering too! One from the set of snaps that I just uploaded, taken at the Schlumberger  BSN Olympics 2008 held in Saudi Arabia this April.

I’m cheering too!

One from the set of snaps that I just uploaded, taken at the Schlumberger  BSN Olympics 2008 held in Saudi Arabia this April.

Inflation insurance and ‘Great’ companies

I chanced upon what Stephen Leeb has to say in The Complete Investor, 

Look to what Warren Buffett likes to call ‘great companies.’ These have two crucial characteristics that allow them to take inflation in stride.

“First, a great company is so dominant in its market that it can pass rising costs along to its customers. And second, it’s in a market growing faster than the world’s economy.

“Any company that satisfies these two criteria can grow faster than inflation. If it’s also blessed with exceptional management, it can control its own costs through efficiencies and thus expand its market share.

And  I swear to God, I would have posted the article here. But the next sentence pushed me to go for the kill.  

“One such ‘great company’ is Schlumberger, which has a prominent role in every major oil project in the world.

But, this was the sentence which made my eyes go $$$:

One metric that is not setting records for this extraordinary company is its market valuation, which in relative terms remains close to an all-time low. This is a remarkable disconnect that we expect will correct in the years ahead. Our two-year target is 170-200.

That’s almost a doubling of market valuation (Currently it is between 90-100). My investment is safe.