Baker Hughes

Pandemic gridlock, rerouting risk, and net-zero expectations are squeezing oilfield service companies into change.

The leading oilfield services firms say a multiyear upcycle is driving improved pricing and technology uptake.

The supermajor and service company that have long been partners on oil and gas projects said they are exploring new models to fit the energy transition. They also separately announced this week new plans to expand into the hydrogen market.

Augury’s machine health technology will further build out Baker Hughes’ integrated asset performance capability, expanding coverage from critical assets to balance of plant machines in the energy and industrial markets. Machine health uses advanced sensors and artificial-intelligence-based software to predict and prevent machine failures.

Banks are finding more success with ESG-related bond sales than they are with fossil fuels. Renewable-energy firms may be able to combine the funding advantages of being a corporation with the tax advantages of being a partnership. Shell boosts solar in Brazil. And a new water-based, bio-based surfactant may be a game changer.

Baker Hughes will build a modular fast-track natural gas liquids processing plant in southern Iraq to capture associated gas for power generation and to reduce flaring.

Traditionally, wireline or logging-while-drilling formation-testing technology has been the most accepted means of reservoir fluid characterization. But when those fluids are contaminated by mud filtrate, acoustic data can be used for fluid characterization during downhole sampling to successfully track and quantify small changes in oil compressibility.

Halliburton and Baker Hughes both forecast moderate growth in their latest quarterly earnings reports.

While Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes focus their legacy technology and service portfolios on driving up efficiency, driving down cost, and making current sources of energy less carbon intensive, they diverge on their approaches to scaling up development and deployment of breakthrough clean energy technologies.

For the entities formerly—and, sometimes, still—known as oilfield service companies, the energy transition presents new business challenges and opportunities. How are they managing?