I lived in North Dakota for a few years. People say that New Englanders have a certain laconically cynical attitude, but they've got nothing on the typical North Dakota farmer. I can hear the old timers sitting around saying, "I told you so."
All told, things didn’t sound as bad as I expected. As compared to 3Q14, 4Q14 sales were +2% in North America and -1% in the RoW. This statement from the CC stands out:
The above may be boilerplate language, but I'm inclined to think there's at least a smidgen of upside for oil-service companies from their clients' desire to optimize performance in this difficult pricing environment.
In North America, SLB expects 2015 E&P spending to decline 25-30% YoY, consistent with third-party surveys. In the RoW, SLB said it’s too soon to quantify the YoY reduction in E&P spending, but they didn’t strongly disagree with third-party surveys predicting a 10-15% decline.
p.s. The 25% dividend increase may not be as bullish as it seems insofar as SLB expects 2015 cap-ex to be about $1B less than in 2014.