there is much written between the lines in that article. i dont see how service companies have any pricing power in current environment.
SLB reports 20Jan and I'd bet it wont be pretty. They are still firing good people, keeping some rather poor 'performers', cutting divisions and moving people and equipment around and between continents, and they've yet to learn that they won't be beating Corelab anytime soon. Changing management on a poorly conceived business model wont fix the problem. On a positive note, they're further reducing operations in France and moving those operations to the US so they'll get a gold star from Trump.
In spite of things like that, becuz everything is being done on short term contracts, when demand does return, then prices will go ballistic. That so many experienced people are out of the industry now and wont be returning will exacerbate costs throughout the chain so I'm not sure that high prices will necessarily mean high profitability. Of course, Ive always said that there are a lot of jobs in the oil industry that a Walmart stocker could do better so i could be wrong (but i doubt it 'cuz the powers-that-be have never recognized that Walmart workers could do many of the jobs for 20% of the cost - specifically anything involved in the supply chain)
