Last month, the world’s fourth-largest oilfield services company, Weatherford, said that it would begin financial restructuring to significantly cut its long-term debt of over US$7 billion. Weatherford expects the restructuring agreement to be implemented under a ‘pre-packaged’ Chapter 11 process and expects to file U.S. chapter 11 proceedings. The financial struggles of the world’s fourth-biggest oilfield services provider after Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes should flash a warning sign for the oilfield services industry, which has suffered the most through the downturn and continues to suffer today, Dan Eberhart, CEO at privately-owned U.S. oilfield services company Canary, wrote in an article for Forbes . Even after oil prices recovered from the 2015-2016 lows and exploration and production companies returned to drill more, oilfield services were struggling to achieve good profit margins, because the much-touted productivity gains for upstream operators, especially in U.S. shale, came at the expense of business […]