RBC’s co-head of global energy research Kurt Hallead said that while operators have squeezed service costs to unsustainable levels over the past year that will not last, and operators in US shale, deepwater and international conventional projects will need to do more with less during the cycle’s next phase.

He said Schlumberger had spent the first part of this decade positioning itself to be the service company best able to meet customer needs through its internal transformation effort and strategic mergers and acquisitions.

“We remain positive on Schlumberger over the longer-term given its pipeline of growth projects and position in the investment cycle,” Hallead said.

“The company’s internal transformation effort is designed to create a step-change in the industry across four main areas: technology, reliability, efficiency and integration.

“The downturn has allowed the company to implement some aspects of the transformation more quickly than expected which should put Schlumberger in a better position when the cycle turns.”

Proving It is still on the front foot in the new world order of low oil prices, Schlumberger has just launched the industry’s highest-pull wireline conveyance system to mitigate risk and save time.

Schlumberger’s MaxPull high-pull wireline conveyance system that can pull from 18,000 pound-force to 30,000lbf in wells some 12,200m deep with an engineered integration of wireline conveyance components which the service major says brings efficiency, reliability and sticking avoidance to complex well trajectories that were not previously wireline accessible.

“With the industry’s highest-pull wireline conveyance system, drillers can expect drillpipe-free wireline operations in any environment with vertical well efficiency and minimum sticking risk,” Schlumberger’s wireline president Hinda Gharbi said.

“In addition our customers can mitigate operational risk and save time during comprehensive data acquisition by eliminating the use of conventional drillpipe conveyance.”

The MaxPull system can pull up to 30,000lbf line tension, which is 43% higher than previously possible. Pairing the system with wireline tractors further improves well access in complex well trajectories while minimising the number of logging runs.

The system has already been tested in a wide variety of well environments and trajectories in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, West Africa, and North and South America.

A customer deployed the MaxPull 30000 system in a deep water Gulf of Mexico well where job modelling indicated logging tension of 20,900lbf. The existing highest-pull system of 21,000lbf did not provide an overpull capability in the event of tool sticking.

By using the MaxPull 30000 system, the customer had the safety margin of 9,000lbf of additional pull. A sticking incident occurred during a reservoir fluid sampling station.

A pull in excess of 29,300lbf was applied to free the toolstring, avoiding a four-day fishing operation and the loss of valuable reservoir fluid data, and saving more than $US3 million ($A3.912 million).