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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Understanding Answers to Questions in a Conference Call -- Like Reading Philosophy

From the Q&A portion of Schlumberger's 3Q11 conference call:
So again, I'm not saying that it's going to happen in the near future. I'm just saying that during the third quarter, we saw flattening of the liquids-rich basin pricing which we haven't seen in recent quarter -- quarters. And I'm also saying that there is a significant amount of horsepower coming into the market as we speak and also going into next year. So my concern on the North America outlook is what is going to happen to pressure pumping pricing.
The word "Bakken" was not mentioned in the conference call, unless I missed, but the phrase "North American" probably referred to the Bakken for the most part.

I don't understand all the financial jargon, and as it is with me for reading philosophy, it is best not to try to parse the phrases but rather press on, read the entire transcript, and try to sort out what was just read.

If I understand that "cut and paste" above, it suggests that SLB is concerned about two things: a) the price of WTI oil (going down this past quarter); and, b) a lot more fracking capacity is heading into the Bakken.

The latter point (more fracking capacity heading to the Bakken) is bad news for SLB, but great news for operators. As I've said many, many times, chaos is self organzing.

For newbies: "horsepower," "pumping pressure" are all related to pushing water, sand, and proppant into the well for fracking. At least as far as I know, but I'm at the edge of my envelope of understanding.

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