Schlumberger history

The new company sold electrical-measurement mapping services, and recorded the first-ever electrical resistivity well log in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, France in 1927.

In 1929, the company starts to grow quickly and logged its first well in the California, United States.

Successfully Expanded into United States Market in 1932

In 1934 the brothers founded Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation in Houston, Texas, to meet the growing demand for their services, and this United States division soon became the largest and most profitable of the parent company's worldwide business.

In 1935, the Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation was founded in Houston, later evolving into Schlumberger Well Services, and finally Schlumberger Wireline and Testing.

Also they logged their first electrical logging in Japan in 1936.

De Ménil, the husband of Conrad Schlumberger’s daughter Dominique, was a banker who became head of Schlumberger’s financial affairs in 1939.

In 1940, when it was clear that France would soon fall and many thought that the Schlum-bergers would be ruined, Marcel Schlumberger was offered $10 million for his business by the head of rival Halliburton Oil.

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.

When Marcel Schlumberger died in 1953, the remaining Schlumbergers were unable to decide on a successor.

Other family members resisted the idea, fearing a loss of both control and quality, but in 1956 Schlumberger Limited was formed in Cura&ccedil, Netherlands Antilles.

As oil drilling gradually fell from its 1957 peak, Pierre Schlumberger and his advisors thought it prudent to expand further into the electronics field.

As the undisputed technical leader in the field, Schlumberger charged what it pleased, and when the initial financial statements were made public in 1958 they showed a first year profit of $12.2 million.

Aside from a pair of French electronics firms, the company’s first significant purchase was the 1959 acquisition of Forages et Exploitations Pétrolières (Forex), a French oil drilling company.

In 1960, Dowell Schlumberger (50% Schlumberger, 50% Dow Chemical), which specialized in pumping services for the oil industry, was formed.

Accordingly, the firm made a major acquisition in 1961 when it swapped stock with Daystrom, a manufacturer of various electronic instruments primarily for military use.

In 1962, the Schlumberger Limited appeared in the list on the New York Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in the world.

Schlumberger purchased 50% of Forex in 1964 and merged it with 50% of Languedocienne to create the Neptune Drilling Company.

Promoted to his place in 1965 was Jean Riboud, a longtime friend of the Schlumbergers, particularly Marcel.

Most of the newcomers required years of work before paying dividends; in 1966, for example, 42 percent of Schlumberger’s $343 million in sales was generated by the electronics division, whose operating deficit held down overall corporate profit to $28 million.

In 1970 Riboud further diversified the Schlumberger portfolio with the $79 million purchase of Compagnie de Compteurs, an aging French manufacturer of utility meters, which also took a few years to become profitable.

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.

Brown, Stanley H., “It’s a ‘Slumber-Jay’ and It’s a Money Gusher,” Fortune, September 1973.

In 1979 Riboud paid $425 million to buy the leading American semiconductor manufacturer, Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation.

By 1980 it had made Schlumberger the largest meter manufacturer in the world and formed the heart of one of the company’s four divisions.

In 1981, Schlumberger established the first international data links with e-mail.

As 1982 drew to an end, however, a close observer would have noticed that Schlumberger’s quarterly profits were slipping, and they continued to do so as a world recession and greater oil conservation combined to put the brakes on oil exploration.

In 1983, Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, England was inaugurated by Schlumberger and later on it was renamed as Schlumberger Gould Research Center after Andrew Gould, the former CEO of Schlumberger.

In 1984, the SEDCO drilling company and 50% of Dowell of North America were purchased.

In 1986 a 50 percent interest in the Norwegian firm GECO, one of the world's top seismic companies, was acquired; the remaining 50 percent was bought two years later.

One of Schlumberger's least-known achievements was its development of smart cards, which grew out of technology that the company had developed for oil wells. It had been one of the first commercial users of the ARPAnet (the precursor to the Internet) and had presciently registered the domain name slb.com in 1987, years before the World Wide Web had achieved any sort of critical mass.

Write-offs and retrenchment pared corporate sales to $4.7 billion in 1989, but with profit again hovering just under 10%, Schlumberger seems to have weathered the worst of the oil depression without serious damage.

EB-Clean, introduced in 1990, was an additive used in a well bore to enlarge cracks.

In 1991, Schlumberger acquired PRAKLA-SEISMOS, and pioneered the use of geosteering to plan the drill path in horizontal wells.

The additive was developed by a joint venture with Dow Chemical called Dowell Schlumberger, which Schlumberger later owned outright when it bought Dow's half in 1993 for $800 million in cash and warrants.

In late 1994 Schlumberger formed a joint venture, Omnes, with Cable & Wireless plc to provide communications and information technology systems for oil, gas, and other companies with operations in remote areas.

The seismic area proved to be highly competitive and not immediately profitable, but by 1995 Schlumberger's focus on improvements to seismic technology had begun to pay off.

The purchase of Houston-based Camco, which had 1997 revenues of $913.9 million, filled a hole in Schlumberger's array of services--the high-end of the oil well completions business, which centered around building wells and readying them for production.

Santos, Karen, "Schlumberger Fills in Holes: Camco Sells for $3 Billion," Houston Chronicle, June 20, 1998.

In December 1999 a federal judge found Schlumberger and Smith guilty of criminal contempt, assessing each a fine of $750,000 and five years of probation.

In 2000, the Geco-Prakla division was merged with Western Geophysical to create the seismic data acquisition and processing contracting company WesternGeco, of which Schlumberger held a 70% stake, the remaining 30% belonging to competitor Baker Hughes.

Schlumberger bolstered its operations in this area in March 2001 by purchasing the smart-card unit of France's Groupe Bull S.A. for $313 million.

Additional charges of $587 million were also taken in 2002, most of which were tied to restructurings of SchlumbergerSema and the WesternGeco joint venture.

In February 2003 Baird resigned and was succeeded as chairman and CEO by Andrew Gould.

The company was an Athens 2004 Summer Olympics partner, but Schlumberger's venture into IT consultancy did not pay off, and divestiture of Sema to Atos Origin was completed that year for $1.5 billion.

In 2005, Waterloo Hydrogeologic was acquired by Schlumberger which was followed by a few other groundwater industry related companies, for example Westbay Instruments and Van Essen Instruments.

In 2006, Schlumberger purchased the remaining 30% of WesternGeco from Baker Hughes for US$2.4 billion.

The sale price is 45.84-a-share price was 37.5 percent higher than Smith closing price on 18 February 2010.

Schlumberger is the world’s largest leading oilfield services providers and one the global market leader in it industry which brings many benefits to it company. For example, Schlumberger ranked in the top 50 of the Engineering category of “ The 2012 World’s Most Attractive Employers” that reflects all the students and professionals will try to seek job opportunities with the company.

Schlumberger announce for the full year result of oil field services in year 2013, land revenue decline 2% in the North America Area.

In 2014, Schlumberger announced the purchase of the remaining shares of SES Holdings Limited (“Saxon”), a Calgary-based provider of international land drilling services, from First Reserve and certain members of Saxon management.

In 2015, Schlumberger was indicted by the US Department of Justice for sanction violations of conducting business in Iran and Sudan; the company was fined $233 million, amounting to the largest fine for sanctions to date.

In 2018, Schlumberger announced that WesternGeco would be exiting the seismic data acquisition business, both onshore and offshore, while retaining its multiclient data processing and interpretation segments.