Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, celebrated better-than-expected fourth-quarter profits with a bumper £321million payout to shareholders.
The Houston-based giant boosted its quarterly dividends by 28% to 24p ($0.40) per share – bringing its full year payout to shareholders to £1.3billion.
Fracking, drilling seismic studies and other lucrative services for oil producers across most of the Middle East, Asia and Latin America helped the company’s profit top analysts’ estimates for the ninth straight quarter.
This was despite seasonal slowdowns in North America, the North Sea, Russia and China also weighing on results.
Full-year revenues for 2013 on continuing operations rose 8% to £27.5billion while profits on continuing operations rose 30% to £4.2billion.
In its European business, including the former Soviet states and Africa, turnover rose 8% to £7.5billion while profits were flatter – up 15% to £1.6billion.
In the UK North Sea, Schlumbergher noted work being undertaken by its Drilling Group Technologies and Petrotechnical Engineering Centre for Enquest. But growth in the division was largely driven by activity in West Siberia and offshore projects in Sakhalin, while exploration and development activity in Sub-Saharan Africa also contributed, the firm said.
The company expects oil producers’ exploration and production spending – the lion’s share of its business – to increase this year for international markets and the Gulf of Mexico.
International markets brought in about two-thirds of Schlumberger’s 2013 revenue of £27.5billion.
“In the United States, we see no change in fundamentals, with any meaningful recovery in dry gas drilling activity some way out in the future,” chief executive Paal Kibsgaard said in a statement.
Two of the other “big three” oil services providers, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, are scheduled to report their fourth-quarter results next week.