The Dismal Thing Schlumberger CEO Just Said about US Oil
2016 to be brutal. Then, dreams of “potential spike in oil prices”
An engineer in the oil industry, who’d sold his house in Houston and bailed out after finding work in another state, just told me this:
A young civil engineer that I am working with is looking for more permanent, stable work. He talked with a head hunter today. The head hunter suggested that the young engineer stay where he is. He said he had 30,000 resumes in his database of engineers who were looking for work right now. Just amazing. I don’t know how many engineers there are in Houston. 200,000? 300,000?
I then called a friend of mine who works for Jacobs. Well, he no longer works there. He was laid off. A very seasoned engineer. He said he was glad I left Houston and that things were looking grim. Fluor and Technip had also laid off a lot of engineers. He said he heard that Fluor, which goes after megaprojects, had laid off 30 Process Engineers – which is what I am.
This is a bad indication. We are the first line of engineers on a project. Then, as the project moves forward, instrument, estimating, electrical, and structural engineers are brought on. If process engineers (chemical engineers) aren’t being used, that means there are fewer projects coming up to keep them busy.
So what happened to the hopes for a recovery?
Three months ago, Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of oil-field services giant Schlumberger, figured the oil industry in the US had bottomed out. But on Friday during the earnings call, he changed his tune.
The business environment “clearly got worsened in the third quarter,” he said. It’s going to get even worse in the US in the fourth quarter. And 2016 is going to be very tough. He doesn’t see a recovery until 2017.
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