A reported loss of over one billion dollars. That's what officials with Schlumberger announced yesterday. The report said that the energy giant had reported losses of $1.02 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015. Fourth quarter losses were blamed a drop in revenue of 39% and high accounting charges.

It's more a sign of the times than an exception to the rule. Schlumberger is just one of many multinational corporations that are taking an even harder look at their staffing, their projected revenue, and the outlook for even lower prices in the oilfield.  Southwestern Energy reported on Thursday that their company will be cutting 1,100 jobs or 44% of their workforce over the next few weeks.

In a prepared statement issued yesterday Schlumberger announced that there would be an additional reduction of 10-thousand jobs. The outlook according to Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard is not good.

The decrease in land activity was the sharpest seen since 1986. With the rig count dropping so steeply,the massive over-capacity in the land services market offers no signs of pricing recovery in the short to medium term.

Kibsgaard's remarks were included in a statement issued by Schlumberger on Thursday.

He went on to say in that same statement that job cuts and reductions were part of the company's overall plan to survive the downturn.

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 re-size our organization as we continued to navigate the downturn.

How those job cuts will affect workers in Louisiana remains to be seen but chances are there will be many in our state affected either directly or indirectly by this announcement from the Houston-Paris based energy firm.

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