Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services provider, warned on Tuesday that its fourth-quarter North America revenues will likely decline 15 percent sequentially on steeper-than-expected price declines in hydraulic fracturing. The drop in hydraulic fracturing activity this year has been “significantly larger” than expected, Patrick Schorn, executive vice president of wells at Schlumberger, said at a conference in New York, leading to a bigger decline in pricing than the company had forecast originally. Oilfield service companies this year have been hit by a slowdown in demand as regional oil prices have fallen with transportation bottlenecks faced by producer customers. A recent drop in the U.S. benchmark crude to around $53 a barrel also has stoked concern of an oil glut next year. Schlumberger is “guiding consensus lower” […]