SLB

History

SLB was founded in 1926 in Paris as the Electric Prospecting Company (French: Société de prospection électrique) by two brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger from Alsace. SLB supplies the petroleum industry with services such as seismic data processing, formation evaluation, well testing and directional drilling, well cementing and stimulation, artificial lift, well completions, flow assurance and consulting, and software and information management. The company is also involved in the groundwater extraction and carbon capture and storage industries.

The Schlumberger brothers had experience conducting geophysical surveys in countries such as Romania, Canada, Serbia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the United States. The new company sold electrical-measurement mapping services, and recorded the first-ever electrical resistivity well log in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, France, in 1927. The company quickly expanded, logging its first well in the U.S. in 1929 in Kern County, California. In 1934, the Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation was founded in Houston, later evolving into Schlumberger Well Services, and finally Schlumberger Wireline and Testing. Schlumberger invested heavily in research, inaugurating the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1948, contributing to the development of a number of new logging tools.

Over the years, Schlumberger continued to expand its operations and acquisitions. In 1960, Dowell Schlumberger (50% Schlumberger, 50% Dow Chemical), which specialized in pumping services for the oil industry, was formed. On February 2, 1962, Schlumberger Limited became listed on the New York Stock Exchange. That same year, Schlumberger purchased Daystrom, an electronic instruments manufacturer in South Boston, Virginia, which was making furniture by the time the division was sold to Sperry & Hutchinson in 1971. The Daystrom acquisition also brought Heathkit, the only consumer business at Schlumberger until Zenith Radio bought Heathkit in 1979. Schlumberger purchased 50% of Forex in 1964 and merged it with 50% of Languedocienne to create the Neptune Drilling Company. The first computerized reservoir analysis, SARABAND, was introduced in 1970. The remaining 50% of Forex was acquired the following year; Neptune was renamed Forex Neptune Drilling Company. In 1979, Fairchild Camera and Instrument (including Fairchild Semiconductor) became a subsidiary of Schlumberger Limited.

In 1981, Schlumberger established the first international data links with e-mail. In 1983, Schlumberger opened its Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, England.

Corporate affairs

France

The company has offices in multiple cities and regions in France: Abbeville, Béziers, Clamart, Montpellier, Pau and Paris.

Such sites and entities are as well at the forefront of the SLB New Energy strategy and development. (example: Geothermal with Celsius Energy and Hydrogen with Genvia)

United States

Schlumberger maintains a 33-acre (13 ha) campus at the northeast corner of U.S. Highway 90A and Gillingham Lane in Sugar Land, Texas; as of 2017 Schlumberger is the third largest employer in the city. In 2015, Schlumberger announced that it was moving its U.S. corporate headquarters to the Sugar Land facility from its Houston office building. The company plans to build new buildings with a scheduled completion time of late 2017. They include a total of 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) of Class A office space and an "amenities" building with 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of space.

In the 1930s, the North American headquarters were established in Houston. In the 1970s, the company's top executives in North America were relocated to New York City. By 2006, the head office had 50 executives and support staff. By that year the company was moving that office to a building near the Houston Galleria.

The company moved its Houston-area offices from 5000 Gulf Freeway in Houston to the Sugar Land campus in 1995.

Controversies

Radioactive sources

In 2006, a radioactive canister imported by Schlumberger was recovered in the Western Australian outback desert. The canister had been lost by the company's transport partner, when the improperly secured container fell off the trailer on which it was being transported.

In 2010, the Aberdeen Sheriff court fined Schlumberger Oilfield UK £300,000 for losing a radioactive source on the rig floor on the Ensco 101 mobile drilling rig in the North Sea for four hours.

Spills

In 2009, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Chesapeake Appalachia LLC and Schlumberger Technology Corp. more than $15,500 each for a hydrochloric acid spill in February 2009 at Chesapeake's Chancellor natural gas well site in Asylum Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Officials said the leak did not contaminate groundwater.

PCB contamination

In 2006, as the current owner of a facility in Pickens, South Carolina, Schlumberger agreed to pay $11.8 million to federal and state agencies for a problem caused by the previous owner, Sangamo-Weston, a capacitor manufacturing plant. The cause of the problem was from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) released into the environment by Sangamo-Weston from 1955 to 1987. According to the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, an additional agreement by Schlumberger to purchase and remove dams will directly improve the Twelvemile Creek, South Carolina ecosystem and provide significant environmental benefits for the affected communities.

Deepwater Horizon

In 2010, Schlumberger was contracted to perform wireline logging on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. On the day of the explosion, the Schlumberger crew was supposed to perform a cement evaluation test, but the test was cancelled and the crew was released by BP to leave the rig on the same day. The cost-cutting decision to cancel the test is dramatized in the subsequent film by Peter Berg.

Business with Iran and Sudan

In 2015, Schlumberger pled guilty to violating U.S. sanctions related to Iran and Sudan and agreed to pay a $237 million penalty.

Sexual harassment

In 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed against Schlumberger, alleging a culture of sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. According to the company's pay-gap report for 2018, women composed a mere 5.4% of field roles and 16.2% of roles in the full company. The lawsuit alleges that males regularly documented their harassment of female co-workers and flaunted them on public forums. Male colleagues would also encourage other men to break into a plaintiff's room at night and stonewall her if she did not consent to sexual activity. The lawsuit also outlines instances of "sexist and hostile comments", and one instance in which a plaintiff was groped. Women who complain to HR are told it is all just "oil field talk" and are subsequently ignored. When a plaintiff kept complaining, Schlumberger allegedly terminated the plaintiff. Women who spoke with The Texas Observer describe a culture of silence, where women stay silent for fear of being fired in the high turnover company.

Russia

In October 2022, it was reported that some of Schlumberger's more than 9,000 Russian employees based in Russia received military draft notices through the company. Human rights groups such as Business & Human Rights Resource Centre are watching how the company responds to the concerns. About a week later, the company said it was evaluating unspecified options for its thousands of Russian employees. According to a list maintained by the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at Yale University which tracks company responses about operating in Russia, Schlumberger is noted as "buying time" while it continues to carry out the bulk of its business in the country.

According to NACP, the company is also facilitating the issuance of conscription notices and is banning remote work for Russians who avoid military draft.

In March 2024, it was reported that SLB has no intentions of withdrawing from Russia, despite western pressure to reduce financial support to the Kremlin's war efforts.