For Oil's Future, See Schlumberger
Its integrated model is the key to surviving a long price slump.
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When you're the hired help, you tend to bear the brunt of your employer's misfortunes. And yet Schlumberger, the biggest of Big Oil's service providers, seems in one way to be doing better than its clients:
On top of covering its dividend, Schlumberger had enough cash flow over the past four quarters to cover most of the cost of buying back $1.9 billion of its own stock -- more than even Exxon Mobil did during the same stretch.