Schlumberger recently announced its full-year and fourth-quarter results for 2015. The fourth-quarter revenue of $7.7 billion decreased 9 per cent sequentially, while the fourth-quarter EPS of $0.65, excluding charges and credits, declined 17 per cent sequentially.

The fourth-quarter restructuring and asset impairment charges totaled $1.46 per share and the full-year free cash flow of $5 billion represented 114 per cent of the earnings.

The company has approved a new share repurchase program of $10 billion as well as a quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per share.

“In this uncertain environment, we continue to focus on what we can control.  Throughout the year we took a number of actions to streamline and resize our organization as we continued to navigate the downturn. In continuing to accelerate the benefits of the transformation program across both our Technologies and GeoMarkets in 2016, we believe we will emerge as a stronger company relative to industry peers and competitors once the price of oil and the market conditions in our industry turnaround,” Chairman and CEO of Schlumberger, Paal Kibsgaard commented.

“We remain constructive in our view of the market outlook in the medium term, and continue to believe that the underlying balance of supply and demand will tighten, driven by growth in demand, weakening supply as E&P investment cuts take effect, and by the size of the annual supply replacement challenge,” he added.

Revenue for the International Areas of $5.7 billion decreased 6 per cent sequentially due to the combination of customer budget cuts, the start of the seasonal winter slow-down, persistent pricing pressure, currency weakness and the largely muted year-end product, software, and multiclient seismic license sales.

Middle East & Asia Area revenue of $2.2 billion declined 5 per cent sequentially mainly due to lower activity in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region as a result of customer budget cuts and project completions. Revenue from the Middle East GeoMarkets was also lower as solid activity in Kuwait and Iraq was more than offset by reductions in the rest of the region due to the effects of service pricing concessions, project cancellations, delayed start-ups of new projects, and abrupt activity disruptions as budgets were exhausted.