SLB N.V. (SLB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. This is Bob Brackett. I'm Bernstein's Oil & Gas E&P analyst and Bernstein's Global Metals and Mining analyst. May I welcome you to the first session of the 38th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference. We are back in person, fantastic to see you. Because this is the first session, I'll go through the logistics for a little bit. We are not expecting any fire drill. So if you hear the fire alarm, take it seriously. The primary exit is straight out the back of the room, turn right, go down to the main lobby area and then down the escalators if they're working. If they've stopped, then treat them as stairs. The second passage would be straight out the back of the room, down the long hallway, through the coffee room and back to the right as well. In terms of how this session will operate, this will be a fireside chat. In about a minute, Olivier will come up and present a number of slides. After he has presented, we'll adjourn and we will sit at the 2 chairs to my left. This is your conversation. The way you will have this conversation is with the QR code that takes you to Pigeonhole. If you don't have a QR code, we've got copies of it in the back, but you can submit questions to Pigeonhole or you can QR code the screen in front of you or to the side of you. You can ask your questions. Ian will moderate those questions. They'll come up to the screen that I have up front. As we wait for your questions to come in, I will treat the conversation almost like a pyramid. I'll start very high with macro questions, work down towards strategic questions and then into the various business lines. So that's how we will proceed. With that out of the way, I will invite Olivier to speak and thank him as the CEO of Schlumberger for joining us at the conference.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. So thank you, Bob and Bernstein, for the opportunity to come back and to present to the Bernstein Strategic Conference. Last year, I was virtual. Today, I'm very pleased to be here in person. So today, we will get the opportunity to speak about the energy industry, about Schlumberger and about what we see -- what we will accomplish over the coming years. So -- but first, let me remind you about some of the statements that I will be making are forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. So then I, therefore, refer you to our latest 10-K and our SEC filings. So let me begin. So last year at this conference, I described our strategy, delivering around 3 engines of growth, which combined present a broad opportunity across multiple strategic time horizons. The world was at that time, emerging from a global pandemic, which was driving a steady recovery in energy demand. Today, as we engage in this discussion, a set of new opportunities and risks have emerged, including energy security, inflation and the related potential slowdown of pace of economic growth. Despite these uncertainties, the need for energy and reinvestment in our industry is now even more acute. And we believe that the strategic directions I described last year are still very, very relevant, and if anything, have been reinforced by recent events across our core, our digital and new energy engine of growth. Let me share with you our latest view of the industry environment, which is one of the most compelling outlooks that I've seen in over 35 years I've been with this industry. So first, the current market fundamental are very constructive. We have global inventories and spare capacity at decade lows. As a result of past underinvestments, magnified by the need for supply diversity due to the recent disruption of Russia supplies, these factors support broad-based investment, accelerating across all geographies and operating environment from high-volume land to offshore deepwater and required to drive new production and capacity increases in response to the supply crisis, demand growth and the need for energy security, creating the condition for longer and stronger upcycle in both oil and gas. Second, the more efficient industry is also emerging with greater capital discipline, a stronger focus on returns and the power of digital to enhance performance and connectivity. Digital will be a defining attribute of this cycle. As operators are driven to increase efficiency and to unlock value for more assets through the adoption of cloud-enabled workflows, artificial intelligence and digital operations. And third, our industry is increasing its focus on sustainability commitments and climate actions. Decarbonization of oil and gas operation is the mandate from stakeholders that will also define this cycle and will result in a lower carbon intensity for oil and gas production, increasing the industry's contribution to a lower carbon energy future. In essence, we enter this new cycle as a more investable, more efficient and a more sustainable industry, better aligned with our customers, our shareholders and all of our stakeholders to deliver higher value and lower carbon. In this context, I would like to look at the unique attributes of Schlumberger that will enable us to outperform in the increasingly favorable growth environment that is unfolding. Against this backdrop I just described, Schlumberger is clearly positioned for outperformance. Geographically, broad-based growth for oil and gas investment will enable us to leverage not just our entire international franchise, which is unparalleled in scope and capability, but also our focused and high-performing North America business. The mix of this activity growth sets in motion the full breadth of our technology portfolio, unique integration capabilities and fit-for-basin technology deployment, which impacts every stage of oil and gas delivery process from exploration to production, long and short cycle. In addition, we benefit from adoption at scale of our digital platform, deploying new efficient cloud-enabled workflows, unlocking deeper insights from data through AI/ML application and offering drilling automation and edge-enabled production solutions, all increasing operational productivity and efficiency. And to extend our leadership position in the lower carbon energy future, we have accelerated our sustainable technology development, launching the industry-first transition technology portfolio and Schlumberger end-to-end emissions solution to help oil and gas operator address methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. This launch has received enthusiastic reception from our customers. We seek partners to help them meet their sustainability commitment. Taken together, our breadth, unique integration capabilities, technology leadership and leading execution are differentiating our performance with customers. We are shaping the future of this industry using technology and digital to help operators accelerate discovery, drill faster, increase production and maximize the value of their assets, all with a lower carbon footprint. So in this context, I would like to share with you 3 examples of how we are delivering for the industry. On the first, our autonomous operations on the Peregrino platform offshore Brazil offer a glimpse of the future of well construction, built on a digitally native foundation and unique equipment and service integration capability. In addition to delivery of the full drilling and control system on the platform, we developed a digital avatar for the full rig, fully enabling the seamless digital orchestration of the surface equipment with the subsurface well construction process, a step closer to our autonomous drilling vision. Second, in the Permian Basin. We are collaborating with a consortium led by the University of Texas on Project Astra, that includes operators, service company and technology partners to advance methane detection. Schlumberger's task in this project to deploy this detection network that applies new highly sensitive methane detectors and leverage data sharing and analytics to inform repair and maintenance decisions in the field. Zero methane emissions are core to the industry's sustainability ambition, and this project is actually a critical step in this journey. The third example I would like to share today is offshore Norway, where we are using unique technology to help Shell increase production from an existing asset delivering gas to the U.K. The Ormen Lange Project, OneSubsea, will deploy a subsea multiphase compression system, an industry-leading innovation that is designed to unlock additional natural gas and increase the feed recovery rate. In addition, the subsea compression system will facilitate a significant reduction in energy consumption, thus reducing the CO2 emission when compared to topside compression. As the energy growth cycle continues to gain momentum, our returns-focused strategy is delivering differentiated financial results. In 2021, we delivered $3 billion in free cash flow and expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 320 basis points. Our financial performance continues in 2022. In the first quarter, we delivered financial results aligned with our full year ambitions, including 14% year-over-year revenue growth and 62% year-over-year EPS growth, excluding charges and credit, and we have recently initiated a 40% dividend increase. These first quarter results were delivered against a backdrop of increasing inflationary pressure and persistent supply chain disruption, outlining the strength of our execution, operating leverage, digital adoption and broadening net pricing impact. Through the cycle, absent of a global recession, we have a significant earnings growth potential and we'll deliver accelerated cash flow and returns as the industry benefits from the combination of unique growth outlook and pricing tailwinds. To summarize, in a compelling environment in our industry, Schlumberger is in a unique position to create value for our customers and our shareholders. With our unique capability, we are delivering differentiated performance as we lead the industry to a more investable, more efficient and more sustainable future. We are in the early stage of unprecedented financial outperformance. The quality of our financial results in this upcycle thus far gives us high confidence that we will continue to create significant value for our shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an exceptional opportunity. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Olivier. Fantastic. Thank you so much for that. I will remind everyone that the way you can ask questions or that you can vote up questions in this session is through the Pigeonhole app. If you need a QR code for that, it will be on the sides of the room and also you could raise your hand, and one of my colleagues can get you a copy. And as we start, I'll begin the Q&A. We've already got a handful of questions, and I'll try to put them into a proper order. If you had attended SDC in 2008, oil would have been about these prices. And a year later, you would have seen a global recession and maybe lower prices in '09. If you had attended SDC in 2011, oil prices would have been about this level, and they would have stayed in triple digits when you came back in 2012, when you came back in 2013, when you came back in 2014. And so if you think about how oil and gas cycles play out, which are we in? And more importantly, how do you plan around those cycles as Schlumberger?

No, great question and great comparative. Personally, I will compare more to the 2006 -- 2004, 2006, 2008 cycle. But to your point, I think we have a confluence of factors that are very favorable for the outlook of this industry. We have first demand growth recovery from the pandemic and beyond. This year, the demand growth, oil demand growth, will be certainly between 2.5 and 3 and next year will be 3 or above. Despite all the uncertainty, despite the setback, despite the China lockdown, demand recovery is on pace. And that's the first factor. The second is that this industry has been underinvesting for the last 6 to 7 years, at scale on the investing I will say, partly internationally and suffer from a buffered supply. The spare capacity today is about 2%. Normally it should be 4%, 5% to allow for some disruption in the market. Today it's 2%. So we need to see and we need to see reinvestment into this industry. Third, the both side of the sector have been hedging to capital discipline. The operator, the net result of this has been a structurally smaller North American market that will not recover to the 2019 peak. Today, the U.S., despite significant rebounds, will deliver about 1.5 less [indiscernible] of production compared to 2019, and it is not set to recover next year. By contrast, this is pulling oil supply from international market. On the service sector, we have also done and pledged for capital discipline. This is part of our core strategy, capital stewardship. So we have lower capital intensity and have made decision to high-grade our portfolio, which we did in North America and we are very disciplined about capital allocation. As a result, pricing is coming back. Pricing premium is coming back significantly. It has been seen last year and is expanding, broadening significantly internationally. And finally, the result of the crisis of Ukraine have created a flight to energy security and flight to energy supply diversification. So we combine this factor, demand growth this year and next year and going forward, because oil and gas is here to stay in the short and midterm. Secondly, this capital discipline, combined with [ passenger ] investments and the plight or the need for energy diversification, supply [ source ] diversification is creating the need for reinvestment. And this is happening at scale today. We are seeing mid-teens growth this year, and this will include pricing. And we see this continuing partly internationally for rebound in the coming quarters in international market.

Interesting follow-up there. So if we're 2 million of spare capacity, we not only need to capitalize to grow to 4 million in a world where supply chains are more complicated and redundant then we need even more spare capacity. Is that the...

Yes. That's a fair statement. Indeed, I think the supply diversification will create a little bit of double sourcing for security reasons. And this will create more buffer than the 2 million or the 4 million barrel. And you have to not forget that every year, we lose 6 million to 7 million barrel to just a decline. So there is a consistent reinvestment into the industry that cannot be offset just by just putting more pressure on the oil and gas industry to produce more tomorrow. It takes time and it takes commitment, but I think I'm pleased to see that this industry is more investable today than it was 2 years ago. It's committing to sustainability and is transforming to digital, to technology, so that's becoming more efficient and get more returns and more capital discipline to the benefit of the shareholders.

A year ago, SDC was virtual. You joined from St. Petersburg. Tell us what you were doing there, tell us what has happened in the last year in Russia, and talk about Schlumberger's approach to its operations there. And then maybe even talk to how Russia, Ukraine might disrupt global markets.

So indeed, I joined for St. Petersburg as there was this economic form that happens every year in Russia, and we've always been attending this because it is a forum that matters for the industry in Russia, and we have been for a long time, established there and have a good presence and the trust for our customers. Now the events over the last 3 months have turned out to be very sad, and we are shocked to see what has happened there, and we took all the steps to care for our employees, first and foremost, in Ukraine, in Russia for our assets. And safety has been our first priority. And then we took the step to comply with the international sanction that were -- that have been published. And we have decided to suspend new investments and technology deployments in Russia. This being said, we are to keep honoring the existing and ongoing capacity and capability we have with our existing customer. But the future is a very dynamic environment. And for us, we'll keep observing and watching the compliance and always being one step ahead, making sure that we protect our people, the safety of our equipments and being fully compliant. Now the consequence of this, as you have seen, and has been that it's creating an additional pool of supply due to supply security, energy security and super diversification. It's difficult to judge what will happen next, a bit on a crisis itself, a bit on elevation of additional sanction. But we have been agile in the past, and we continue to be agile and not only be compliant, but make sure that we move our assets where we have opportunity to get a return. And all the capital equipment that were supposed to be shipped to Russia this year are being diverted to support our international operation, our North America operation and then some of the offshore upside that we see happening today.

And then if we think -- you mentioned in your comments the theme of capital discipline. That's clearly been a prominent one. We have a question from an investor that capital spending has been incredibly restrained in the U.S., especially around shale. So the 2-part question: one is, is capital discipline an opportunity or a threat for Schlumberger? And do you see capital discipline breaking?

No, I think we have made a conscious decision 3 years ago when I came to this position. We made a strategy and our strategy was returns-focused, what we call performance strategy. And part of it, we elevated capitals to our ship and decided to do a few things. First and foremost, to look at our portfolio of business line and market position, and we decided to exit the most capital-intensive part of our business to make sure we could leave within a reduced capital spend and hence, generate more cash returns for our future and for our shareholders. So we did exit part of the North America. We high-graded our portfolio in North America. We have less dependency on capital-intensive markets. And we have used and we have deployed internally a capital strategy process that is led by our CFO that really forced every business unit, every part of our organization to compete for capital and creating a little bit of a peer competition to high-grade our contract and to look for pricing and better return on capital opportunity, and we are making great progress on that. So is it breaking? No, I think it's creating the condition where the result is a market that turns into your pricing to the benefit of the supply industry in the next -- last few months to a quarter. It was very visible last year in North America. It's very visible now internationally. I'm just coming back from Asia, flying there last night. And I think we are seeing similar of pricing and similar of [ stress ] to deploy as the new equipment and the new rigs are being mobilized for offshore or for onshore equipment. The pull on supply to equip these rigs is met with capital discipline on our side. And hence is creating the condition for pricing a premium or for high-grading our contract. So that's happening today, and that's beneficial to us.

Is inflation good, bad or neutral for Schlumberger?

I think inflation is never a good thing for economy, but I think as a global company, having been facing different economic condition across more than 100 countries where we operate, we know how to deal with inflation. We have been dealing with inflation for decades. So a very mature supply chain, logistics [ sourcing ] organization, that first and foremost does everything to use our global footprint and use our scale to negotiate out of some of the commodity price increase and some of the significant inflation -- inflationary pressure, we feel. So at the same time, I think we took steps in the last month, in the last quarters, to elevate pricing and elevate discipline through the capital stewardship to clear guidance to our commercial team and to our operation team. And we have been offsetting, more than offsetting this inflation that we are seeing across the different basin across all operating environments. Again, a different scale, depending on where we operate and depending on our customer base. But we have realized a net pricing in a sense, and it's visible in our margin. We have been logging 6 quarters of margin expansion since Q3 of 2020, only with a slight transition last quarter, but we are set to resume this. We have an opportunity, and we have an ambition that we have clearly articulated for this year to again expand our margins, our EBITDA margins 200 bps exit -- to exit at the end of this year compared to end of '21. And we expect this to only continue as the cycle continues to unfold and the pricing condition continued to be favorable.

Related, how do you plan to retain and attract high-quality talent in light of the coming influx of capital to the sector?

I think we have seen that in the last few months and a couple of quarters where we had to onboard back significant resource to meet the demand, to meet the growth, both here in the U.S. and internationally. We are available to attract back talent. Our brand reputation for training, for development and for caring for our people have been playing a significant part in our attractiveness. We also happen to have a very compelling vision that gets the young talent excited. We are leading the oil and gas decarbonization and commitment to climate actions. We have a very significant digital portfolio that is always attracting the best. And we are developing an exciting New Energy portfolio across hydrogen, across CCS, across lithium, geo-energy, energy storage. That also is part of the future outlook for talent that we will bring on. So today, yes, we see competition in some domain, digital, particularly. But in the core oil and gas and new energy, we're able to attract talents because we are different, and we have an excellent reputation of a culture of development of talent and a culture that is multinational and that includes diversity and inclusion. So we are successful so far.

If you think about the 3 pillars, you've got core, you've got digital and integration, you've got New Energy. Somebody joining out of university as an engineer, would she spend her career moving through those different pillars? Or would you end up in one and rising in that pillar? What would that career path look like?

That's a good question. I think I will -- we'll see what will happen next, but I think I had the privilege to start in technology, [ growing my career ] and spend 6 or 7 years of career in digital and at the end, in the last 3 years, participate to develop the New Energy. So I had the privilege to touch these 3. And I think that is what is making exciting -- an exciting opportunity for engineers and [indiscernible] to join Schlumberger because the depth and the breadth of our [indiscernible] the depth and the breadth of our operational deployments. You can work in 120 countries. You can live with 160 different nationalities. You can get work assignment into deploying hydrogen solution in France or go for the core and be on a deepwater rig in Brazil fully automated with digital. So that unique diversity of options is something that we can offer. And I think I will see that people will start in the core most likely because I think this is where we are the most and larger scale opportunity. And then with a different degree of -- in digital or new energy and then we'll jump in and participate to our growth in digital and new energy for the future.

We had a question on the U.K. windfall profit tax. I won't ask you your political view, but if you could think about does that influence capital investment? And is that a threat of spreading to other regions?

No. I think the U.K. has been -- I've been there, I've been managing the North Sea 10 or 15 years ago, so I'm very familiar with the set up here. And I think whether there is a positive support to the industry or whether it's negative support in the industry like this windfall tax, yes, it's not helpful. But I think it's -- this is driven by, I think, the multiplicity of investors that have been operating the asset there. And yes, it will add a bit of a setback, but there is a balance of factors that are still making the U.K. a steady, albeit much smaller than it was 15 years ago, but a steady activity basin because it has proximity of the European market. It has gas and it is something that will keep getting the support. And yes, people will work with that environment. And I don't think that this will spread in many of our regions. I think there is enough communication engagement by the industry with all the authorities and the country where we operate to make sure that the fiscal regime are keeping, being kept with good incentive. So that this investability that I was talking about that is coming back is not being challenged and is seeing support from the country we operate. So I believe this will happen.

And then there's a few questions on digital integration. I'll start with one, which is to say it appears digital and integration is a lower beta business, which is good for a cyclical sector like ours, and it's your highest margin business, how do you grow it faster?

I think first, we need to be clear on the -- and I think this is -- this has been disclosed before. Our digital and integration business includes our digital, our historical software premium desktop offering, combined with our new digital cloud-based platform that we are growing very fast. And this is combined with our integration business that consists of our APS, Asset Performance Solutions, that relates to operated assets that we have both in Ecuador and Canada. So this is typically a steady business where we are operating assets with a target production volume that we maintain or slightly grow over time. So that's a consistent business. And this is, in essence, diluting the growth of digital which is growing at an accretive growth compared to the total company. So digital is a very significant opportunity for us. We have established 5 years ago, a digital platform, a leading digital platform for our industry. We were already the premier desktop software company, that position that we have built over the last 20 years, and we decided to transition into a cloud fully -- full offering. Similar to what Microsoft is doing with Microsoft Office to Office 365. So having the same transition, we have more than 1,500 customers on our desktop offering, and we will be transitioning all these customer over our cloud offering of our digital platform, and that's the digital adoption we are seeing. They are adopting this. And we see that this [ solution ] rate a significant tail, long tail of transition to this business. And every time we transition a customer, it's a new set of revenue stream. We are transitioning from a desktop software maintenance business model to a SaaS to a DaaS with data-as-a-service and to different business model that are monetizing this offering. So we see the benefit in terms of number of customers that are transitioning at scale. We are seeing the adoption for every customer that will use more workflows, more data, more digital operation capability that we cannot offer with our software today. And we see that for every single geoscientist, production engineers, drilling engineer, they will consume more as we deploy the platform. We are seeing it today, we are seeing a tenfold increase in our compute cycle intensity that we offer in the cloud. And it is -- this is happening everywhere. So the intensity of the utilization of the platform, the number of users, the number of customers transitioning, new and existing customers, will all generate growing long tail of digital revenue going forward or any stream going forward. So that's the power of our position in digital today.

Related to that is, I know it's hard to quantify, but how far along would you say the digitization of upstream data is today in North America, maybe as a percentage?

I would think that we are still in the very early innings of this. I think data in our industry has been the gold mine of our industry, but we have not been able to exploit it very well due to different reasons. First, a lot of unstructured data exists in our industry. That is not necessarily organized and structured in an easy way to be tapped into. Secondly, I think we have been suffering from a silo into the different applications, the different data -- host of data structure that exists across the different workflows from exploration to production. So we have been approaching this with an open source and open standard view. So we did -- 3 years ago, we did contribute our data, data ecosystem to the industry to help support the OSDU, Open Subsurface Data Universe, which is a foundation that is being used by an entire industry to structure and have an open source data framework that can help unlock innovation. So everybody uses the same data structure to then plug them and put all the asset data from exploration to production. And then the entire industry can plug their own digital application. And then they unlock the power of innovation. So that's what we have done. So we were the first to commit and to help create this open data standard. And then we have been building the old DELFI on this open foundation. So we see adoption accelerating because of that offering. And we are developing with Microsoft, and it will be sold by Microsoft and by us, a solution for data management to then help deploy this for every customer and existing data asset so that the transition is happening. And then data services ingestion, consumption, AI capability will be available on it. We are deploying the same with IBM. So we have IBM and Microsoft as strategic partner of our open data foundation. So we see that this is what is happening in the industry. The industry is adopting the standard layer, the standard data foundation that will then help customers, help operator, help digital company like ours deploy new digital solutions at scale and unlock the transformation, digital transformation for this industry.

Related question we have is what is your appetite for inorganic growth in either digital or perhaps new energy?

I think we are always looking out there for the right opportunity at the right time. I think we have a lot of expertise and experience in acquiring a company in digital. That's the way we have created this digital leadership that we have today by a set of successive acquisition. And what we have built over time in digital is a capability to integrate and create a platform that can then add bolt-on acquisition if needed. So we'll keep watching out. But I think we will, first and foremost, consolidate our offering to our oil and gas customers so that when they adopt this DELFI cloud infrastructure that we have commercialized, they have opportunity to buy more from the same shop and then expand their solutions. So from exploration, which we have a very strong offering to production and drilling, we'll keep looking for plug-ins, for add-on, be it by small acquisition or by partnership with a company that allow us to deploy their solution on our platform like we did with NOV for the drilling application or we do with data, AIQ for AI application. New Energy. We have done mostly organic development with the capability we have and some inorganic equity positions for acquiring exclusively some IP that then we use to deploy in adjacent space and create a new energy offering, a set of ventures that are adjacent to our core and digital and use our strength, strength of technology, industrialization, innovation, strength of global deployment and strength in subsurface where we see there is an adjacency between what we do and CCS. There is an adjacency in what we do and lithium extraction from on the ground brine. And there is an opportunity for us to leverage the core, leverage digital and create new energy. So we continue to do so and continue to look out for the right opportunity in the domain we have selected.

In New Energy, what won't you do? To me, strategy is not defined by what you will do. It's actually what you won't do. So talk to that.

So first, the way we look at -- just to answer your question, I will have to reiterate what we do and the reason why we do. So we have decided to go after a domain where we see adjacency, partly on the subsurface. We see ability to leverage our industrialization, innovation, technology capability that have been used at strength in the core or with digital. And deployment, global deployments, we can project an innovation from anywhere to anywhere in the world. We can deploy technology at scale. We have engineers and we have scientists working across the globe, and we have been proving that we can deploy the most complex technology in the most remote environment. So that's the strength because new energy will happen everywhere. New energy will not be centralized, new energy would be decentralized in every country. Every country is doing the National Data Mine contribution pledge and they have to commit and transition. So that's our strength. Now what we are not doing, we are very conscious about capital intensity. So very conscious about not going into business that will consume a lot of capital and have us to commit so that we can be more on the technology rather than on the capital project. We will not go into domain where we believe that the domain has already commoditized and there is limited space for technology sustainable differentiation that will attract premium. Hence, you can second-guess the domain. So we're not in a sense, if you compare ourselves to some of our operators that are having a new energy strategy, they go after capital projects because they have competency to run and operate capital product and they have the capital commitment to those. And they are going after what I would say, are low return and commoditized high-volume capital project in new energy, and we are not going after this. We are going after technology position for being an OEM to those sector or to be going into new emerging markets, such as direct lithium extraction. There is a lot of stress and demand onto the lithium for EV or for energy storage in the future. And similar to the oil that is seeing [indiscernible] supply as a critical item and as a critical feature of the future, security of lithium is becoming a major theme in the U.S. and in Europe. And as such, when we can deploy a capability to extract on the U.S. soil or in Europe and produce lithium from the underground, this is seeing a lot of support. So that -- these are examples of what we do. And we focus on the technology. We focus on innovation. We focus on ability to deploy this at scale in any country as opposed to commit to capital project necessarily.

As a geologist, the first pillar, the idea of subsurface adjacencies, that's the one I internalized first as part of your New Energy strategy. And then the one I sort of internalized second, so if you think about NMR, if you go to your doctor's office, there might be an NMR machine that takes up half of the room. Schlumberger can take that machine, reduce it to the diameter of a water bottle effectively and deploy it at 10,000 psi at a temperature above the boiling point of water, and it works, right? So that's the technology aspect. Of course, in 120 countries. So that's interesting to me. I have to ask a side question on direct lithium extraction. Is there anything in new energy that looks like shale to you? Because shale overcapitalized rapid learning curve, right? We learned our lesson there. Do you see anything in the new energy, not in your -- but in new energy in general? Is direct lithium extraction a shale look-alike with a learning curve.

I think CCS is another domain where I believe that it's certainly one of the biggest domain application that is adjacent to what we do, but without carbon pricing scheme across the globe and without some disruptive innovation on the capture side, this will not be [indiscernible] at scale. But when this happens, I think the CCS has a fantastic potential as a response to climate actions. The potential of CCS is to abate 7 gigaton to 10 gigaton out of the 50 and to continue to significantly contribute, let's say, 10% to 15% or more of the abatement going forward. So there's a trigger factor here that could happen at scale. Today, it's 40 megatons per year of CCS application, mostly enhanced recovery on depleted oilfield. Tomorrow, it's, yes, 5 to 7. So the CAGR of that market. The potential of that market is huge. That's the reason why we are going into that market, and we have a leading position to this on the subsurface sequestration, and we are expanding our knowledge and our participation across the capture side. So this is something that could completely step up and become a new domain where we participate at scale, and we establish a new division that is going very fast into the next decade.

So I hear the Holy Grail might be at that point source capture side. But we do have a question. Can CCS ever be profitable without a price on carbon?

So I think, again, it depends on the -- the simple answer on the -- without the price on carbon, the economics will not give the incentive to initiate investment and to scale. Over time, however, the capability of decarbonized still planned that will then create a green steel or cement plant that will fully decarbonize will create naturally the incentive. I was in Davos last week and I met with several of the end users of some of the carbon products, and one of them was the CEO of Volvo, and they have made a commitment for a zero carbon truck. And it comes down to every aspect, okay, from zero carbon steel to zero carbon rubber and all elements that used today some carbon-intensive process. So the incentive is pulling and is getting a premium for this truck. So -- and the same, Maersk has committed to us for zero carbon ships, and they got a first commitment from Amazon for that first 10 ships. So I think this condition are clearly happening today. And this is something that will create beyond the carbon pricing, the economic incentive to CCS to become part of the supply, part of the fabric of our society. CCS would be built in into some of the core process upstream, I would say, into our industry. And the carbon pricing will naturally then become embedded into our economy.

So we don't need a single price on Bloomberg to pull up the global price of carbon, it can become a fabric of...

I think for the first few years, for the first few cycles for the early steps to unlock CCS today, CCS is happening and is creating a lot of -- initially, a lot of studies and is starting to work in the U.S. because there's a [ fortified queue ] happening in the U.S. And I think this is the trigger that created the market. But then the self-sustainability of the market will come when the end users and the demand will be connected to the technology. Today, the chain is a little bit too long in number of players into this value chain as well as it's too long in time, the cycle is too long before the demand can trigger a project. So I think this decade will be a matter of unlocking this buyer, whereas next year, next decade, I believe it will be scaling and self-sustaining solution.

And as a closing thought as we've hit the end of our time, perhaps in contrast to your peers in contrast to your customers, what's the value proposition for owning Schlumberger stock?

I would have to curate it in 3 ways. First, we're a technology company. We're an innovator. We'll continue to be a technology innovator for the energy system of the future through decarbonization, through digital and through technology that they really fit. The second is that we are uniquely global. Global in many ways. Global in our country exposure, 110 countries and really well exposed across different operating environment, different countries; across different customers in oil and gas, in digital and in new energy; and across the different domain that we're exposed to. So global diversity is the second. And the third is execution. We are a company that execute very well. We have been saying a new strategy 3 years ago. We set the path for returns-focused performance strategy transformation. We have executed on this path. We set the path for margin expansion, we're executing. And we are today setting a path for elevating our digital and new energy, our core performance, and we'll continue to execute. So technology innovator, unique global scale and go-to-market capability, and finally, execution. That's the way I think I will define it, and that's why I'm optimistic, and I'm just claiming this moment as a great opportunity.

Thank you for your time, Olivier. Thank you, audience, for your time as well. I hope you all stay to listen to Chevron, and I hope to connect with you during the week as well.

Thank you very much.