Doug Sheridan

6 Oil Industry Suppliers to Consider

Jon6k, yes we do have some ratings information on Carbo Ceramics (ticker: CRR). In general, the data suggests the company rates quite high in terms of customers satisfaction. Contact me at EnergyPoint's offices in Houston if you desire additional detail.

Doug

6 Oil Industry Suppliers to Consider

jarco, thanks for the question. For EnergyPoint's oilfield products survey, we do ask land and offshore drilling contractors to rate the suppliers of rig and related equipment they use when providing their services. In fact, we posted a report to Seeking Alpha examining NOV and other such providers a few months back. Here's the link to that article: seekingalpha.com/artic...

On Dec 02 12:26 PM jarco wrote:

> Do you have thoughts on suppliers to these installers/processors?
>
>
> Pipe suppliers such as NOV, for example.

6 Oil Industry Suppliers to Consider

<IMG class=authors_reply src="static.seekingalpha.co..."> mbkelly75, glad you found the article to be of interest. And thanks for the nice comments. Doug Sheridan

Is Baker Hughes Losing Its Touch?

Hi GoshSteve,

Looking at Baker Hughes's ratings in EnergyPoint's surveys over the years, the company has actually performed quite well. It's only in recent years that its ratings have begun to show some strain. While I do not mean to suggest that a centralized management approach is superior to a decentralized approach (or visa versa), I can tell you that oilfield customers have shared with EnergyPoint that they have found BHI more difficult to work with across units than some of it competitors. As my article mentioned, customers want oilfield suppliers to be "learning" organizations; that is, organizations that constantly learn and push for improvements. And they want this not only within -- but across -- divisions.

While I do wonder weather BHI's ability to win more integrated business (e.g., the PEMEX packages) might be improved if its were a little more centralized in its approach to its business, I should tell you that I am somewhat skeptical as to whether the full blown integrated project management (IPM) approach some in the industry are pursuing is in fact going to be the wave of the future. EnergyPoint just started collecting ratings for IPM as a category, and they do not suggest (at this point, anyway) that customers are particularly pleased with what they are receiving. My guess is that if BHI simply continues to focus on doing a better job of “bundling” its individual products and services, it should be able to effectively compete (in part on quality) with Schlumberger’s and Weatherford's "IPM" offerings.

Customer Satisfaction Declined Significantly During Oilfield Up Cycle

Noble Corp (NE) is the parent of Noble Drilling. "Noble Drilling" is how the company is known to many in the marketplace. Note that Noble Corp is not the same company as Noble Energy, whose symbol is NBL.

The Four Best Drill Bit Suppliers

Hi Turninrite,

Given your handle, I suspect you are in the oil and gas industry. As author of the original article on drill bits, I wanted to respond to your comments.

True, drill bits are just a portion of sales for each of the four major bit manufacturers. However, they are much-focused upon (and touted) pieces of equipment because of the direct impact they can have on the overall cost of a well. Most customers look at the "cost" of a drill bit as the base price of the bit plus the additional amount they save (or pay) in day-rate for the rig, crews, etc. as a result of the bit’s performance (or non-performance). For example, if a bit's price is 2X but saves 4X in rig and crew costs, that's a "superior" bit compared to one that costs 1X but does not save anything at all in terms of rig or crew costs.

In addition, one of the points of the orginal article was that the new computer-aided design and simulation being utilized by today's bit suppliers does appear to be very well received by customers -- so much so, that we suspect it might represent a potential next wave of product and service design in certain areas of the oilfield. If some manufacturers want to sell bits that don't last as long as their competitors (so they can sell more "replacement" bits in the short term), they do so at their own risk. The U.S. auto makers applied that kind of myopic thinking in the 70's and 80's, and now they trail the Japanese in quality, earnings and market share. Bit manufacturers clearly need to design, manufacture and service the very best products they can; to do otherwise is to place themselves on a very, very slippery slope in the longer term.