Both slumberger and baked huges, pulled ops out of Canadian patch when oil crashed in 2014. They ran for the printing presses of shale wells down south. It was a bloodbath of pink slips. I saw and felt the pain. Those companies with all the corporate bullshit about caring for employees, couldn't get out fast enough. They ran for big bucks in fracland. Good thing that came of it, was small local guys bought lots of their old iron for cheap, and have built some pretty decent companies. Those two American companies can fuck right off and die for all I care. I have no sympathy for their earnings at all. They weild the sword, they can suffer it as well. You are very correct that there are no careers, only jobs in the patch, and those two have lots of blood under the fingernails cheers all

Halli divorced me and 35,000 other small independent operators like me in the U.S.in 2014 for the exact same reasons. If you could get them at all, it cost 3 times what it use to because of tight oil. I dealt with Halli salesman in a South Texas camp for 30 years and he finally told me straight up, Halli was not interested in working for me anymore; my tickets were too small. So, fuck 'em.

Mike and CC,

Been there; done that. The myopia of management in some of these outfits is staggering. I get big ticket, one stop shopping on their part. But let's see, what was that phrase of old, oh , yeah, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Even Jeff Foxworthy said that you got to diversify with your assets.

Saw this in 2014 when all LTO crashed and the service guys were required to take huge haircuts. Gee whiz, if you have to discount the hell out of your products and services to the big guys and wait 180 days for payment (sorry Mike but that was a thing almost 40 years ago) and then wait on the big ticket, one stop BK, what kind of a sustainable model do you have? You cycle through good hands and lose customers to the guys that will buy up assets and remake the contractors like you grew your company with in the first place. Makes you wonder if the investors in the big s &s companies are the same one investors in the LTO companies. Anyway, they're twins. Tomorrow....what's that? Carpe diem!

I refer you to a comment from Solomon on another thread.

Have blessed days gentlemen.

Well, this problem for the service and supply sector is most all a function of consolidations. When the primary reasoning behind a consolidation is efficiency of scale, service providers get hurt, badly. The sector squeezes service providers and I know for a fact, threatens them, as in... you want our work, you have to reduce your costs and wait months to get paid. Or else.

Then, people get laid off and go home. The more this happens, and it has happened numerous times over 15 years, the more people don't come back to a volatile industry like tight oil and tight gas. There are no careers left in the oil and gas sector, only jobs.

Jobs in the upstream sector of tight oil are being lost.

The tight oil business model was crafted to avoid liability. They used other people's money that they have lost by the hundreds of billions of dollars. They design MSA's that release them from ALL liability and allow them to pay service providers and suppliers on 90-180 terms. I know folks who have $2-$3MM on their accounts receivable books who do not get paid for 120 days or more.

CEO's and upper management lose money for stakeholders but continue to pay themselves 10-20MM dollar a year compensations, regardless. State regulators do not make the tight oil sector adhere to the same regulatory standards as smaller, conventional producers in the State; that is a fact.

Nobody puts their name on loans to personally gurantee those loans; they skate free. Some CEO's and upper managment get bonuses for filling bankruptcies and wiping debt off the books.

There will be nobody's feet held to the fire when tens of thousands of wells have to be plugged, abandoned and infrasture decommissioned.

Everything works with a nobody-on-the-hook-model like this one until depletion sets in. Consolidations are a function of depletion. Then the entire scheme falls apart. Its falling apart right now.

Large volumes of oil translate to lower oil prices that in turn equals lower energy costs to the consumer, part of the Trump plan. But private enterprise cannot continue to drill wells and make a profit with low oil prices. All Trump can do is eliminate all regulatory costs, like methane leakage, or flaring, or SWD issues that cause earthquakes and expand the worldwide market by stronger sanctions on other countries. It still will not work and the price of oil is going down. More people will lose their jobs. The tight oil sector has had all the Federal drilling permits it can handle the past 8 years; thats a lie. Get a BLM permit faster, then try and drill it with $40 oil and 50 cent gas.

And finally, all of this was primarily created for the sake of oil exports to foreign countries. The past 10 years the best places, and the best benches have been overdrilled in all of America's shale basins. Ten billion barrels of U.S. oil, equal to all the EUR in Guyana, has been exported. Now there is nothing left but scraps. When America needs its own tight oil, it will be scarce and cost more.

The United States shale oil phenomena will prove to have actually been harmful to America's long term energy security in the long run. Never in my 60 years in the oilfield have I seen an oil play, like shale oil, so poorly managed for the long term. The CEO's and regulators that are responsible are about to disapper into the weeds, never to be seen or heard from again.

Regrettably, I do not expect to be a candidate for a cabinet position in the Trump administration; yours truly,