2000s: Building on Core Strengths

The first decade of the new century saw Schlumberger extend its commitment to its core energy industry tools and services. This was accompanied by the relocation of Schlumberger Limited US corporate headquarters from New York to Houston in 2006. Andrew Gould, Schlumberger chairman and chief executive since 2003, said the move would consolidate the company's presence in the community that was instrumental in its development.

The company has made further strides in understanding reservoirs and launched a host of new technologies and products. Integration of its tools has been crucial to the improvement of Schlumberger services. Imaging tools, production logging tools and Scanner 3D tools were integrated with other Schlumberger technologies to achieve superior reservoir characterization from initial acquisition through to reservoir simulation.

The launch of the ABC Analysis Behind Casing suite of services in 2002 provided a valuable new aid in the evaluation of cased wells where openhole logging is too risky, or in old wells where reevaluation can reveal bypassed pay zones. The suite includes technologies to measure porosity, resistivity, lithology, shale content, fluid saturations, and pressure, as well as enabling the recovery of fluid samples.

The commercialization of the Scanner family of downhole rock and fluid characterization services in 2005 provided engineers with access to new-generation nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tools, as well as sonic, resistivity, pulse-echo impedance, and three phase production logging measurements, reducing uncertainty in reservoir and fluid characterization.

Quicksilver Probe wireline sampling technology, introduced in 2006, provided a way to deliver fluid samples quickly with little or no contamination. This was complemented in 2007 by the arrival of the InSitu Density sensor, the first of the InSitu family of fluid properties measurement tools.

Schlumberger also reinforced its seismic offering. Geco-Prakla was combined with Western Geophysical in 2000 to create WesternGeco, 70%-owned by Schlumberger and 30% by Baker Hughes. Six years later Schlumberger bought Baker Hughes' stake to take full ownership.

A series of acquisitions in the seismic sector over the rest of the decade has built on this platform. Petrel Workflow Tools was acquired in 2002, bringing with it Petrel seismic interpretation software, which increases reservoir performance by helping geophysicists, geologists, and reservoir engineers to develop collaborative workflows and integrate operations to streamline processes.

WesternGeco began its Q-Marine surveys in 2000. WesternGeco and Statoil created the industry's first long-term reservoir monitoring program in 2004. Late in the same year, Petrobras awarded WesternGeco what was then the world's largest-ever 4D seismic project, shooting over the Marlin field offshore Brazil.

Additions were made to the company's global "teleport" network of satellite communications bases with the opening of new facilities in Brazil and Singapore and a second teleport in Aberdeen, Scotland. Schlumberger now has 12 teleports around the world, supporting its full range of VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) communications services.

The Schlumberger-Doll Research Center was relocated from Ridgefield, Connecticut, to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2007, to take advantage of greater proximity to academic and other institutions working at the forefront of science and technology in that technological hub.