Tell me about Halliburton’s presence in the Middle East and North Africa, and any growth and development plans for the near future within the region.
Halliburton already exists in the whole Middle East and North Africa, in all areas. However, our focus right now is really in four areas:
First, we are expanding project management, especially since the national oil companies want more project management in this region.
The second focus is leading in unconventionals, and we are doing this with the technology that we have, and how we can bring our experience that we have in the US to the Middle East and North Africa.
The third focus area is in growing our interventions. There are plenty of closed wells, of mature field wells, so our rigless intervention portfolio, especially with the new technology of the Spectrum Fusion, puts us ahead of all other major service providers.
Lastly, we want to grow in underserved product service lines, including artificial lift, where we do not have any existence, and production chemicals.
These four areas will be Halliburton’s key focus areas in the Middle East and North Africa for the coming three years.
Halliburton has been working in multiple countries to develop local techniques to help operators overcome regional challenges and produce unconventional resources at a much lower cost. Do you have any update on progress?
Actually, we have a great update on this, because we have started in one Middle Eastern country to use local sand in massive amounts, and this puts that country’s unconventional production in the exact same position as what is happening in the US, which should really reduce their costs by almost 30%.
We are still working on another technology for water treatment, so we can use salt water for fracking, and it is still under evaluation, not yet 100% used.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you are anticipating for Halliburton, looking ahead?
I think the challenge is that we still see, in general, that despite the fact that activity is growing, pricing pressure still exists in the market.
The pricing pressure will equalise when the equipment gets tight across the globe. Additionally, the US is getting softer. So I would say that the biggest challenge right now is probably the pricing pressure that we are facing.
