During my 30 plus years as editor of Subsea Engineering News, the only subject I enjoyed writing about as much as new technology was the business of business. There have been so many buyouts, mergers, takeovers, reshuffles and the like that they would assuredly fill a book or two. The result, of course, as I said in my last missive about the Schlumberger-Aker Solutions-Subsea 7 joint venture, is a shrinking marketplace for subsea products and services. In fact there would hardly be enough readers to make writing the book worthwhile – or at least that is my excuse for not doing so.
One of my all-time favourite companies, at least in the context of corporate activity, was the old Brown & Root, better known as Root & Toot. The company underwent so many reorganisations during one period, in which Norman Chambers was the managing director, that I once said, possibly ill-advisedly as Chambers was a former American college wrestler, that he was possessed by a demonic management consultant. Fortunately for my well being, I never actually came face to face with Chambers after that comment.
Another company. or maybe companies is more correct, that has had many iterations is the one now known as Baker Hughes. From the subsea perspective, it has a long pedigree that goes back to the days of Vetco Gray, one of the original and maybe the first supplier of subsea xmas trees, and subsea controls specialist GEC Avionics. After they merged many years ago, they existed under several big corporate banners: first it was ABB (ABB Seatec?) followed by GE. Under the former, there was a real desire to make an impact in the subsea world, but eventually management decided to give up on the hardware side and concentrate on the company’s core expertise in electrical engineering and electronics. It is still doing so. The latter, one of the biggest industrial conglomerates in the world, had the financial and technical wherewithal to be a player, but wanted it all to happen too soon. It was also hampered – and probably frustrated – by the fact that FMC, now TechnipFMC and another company with various former entities in its closet, had secured such a strong position in the market, that all the other players followed in its wake. Assuredly GE’s top management was not used to playing second fiddle to anyone.
And so one comes to BH, now led by former GE-man Lorenzo Simonelli, who I believe came from its Italian pump manufacturing side, Nuovo Pignone. This week BH announced yet another reorganisation, pushing together oilfield services with oilfield equipment and turbomachinery with digital solutions. This will hardly shake up the market. Hard to control the yawning. All it does is simplify, sort of, its organisation and eliminate a few middle management jobs. Pretty mundane. Simonelli, on the other hand, is rather a strange character. At a time when most people in the industry realise the significance of the energy transition – consider how many carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects were announced at ONS last week and how often hydrogen for fuel was mentioned – Simonelli could not resist the temptation to say ‘hydrocarbons are here to stay’ and that hydrogen as fuel had been used for decades. Neither of these points are untrue, but context is everything. Maybe there are all those pieces of equipment that he hopes will be sold or need maintaining, but may end up being mothballed or recycled. Who knows? It was all a bit dinosaur-ish. Maybe like Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil (see SubseaWatcher: Who Needs to say ‘Mea Culpa’), he is looking forward to retiring back in Italy to grow tomatoes, hoping that no one will ask what he did in the past when he goes to the local trattoria for lunch. Buon appetito!
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Usually once a year, I go to the visitor counter on my website to see how many folks have come to read my spoutings. The count for the last year was just over 137.000 hits. Not too shabby for someone not a member of the British Royal family, a pop star or a Kardashian. I will be blunt – I would like your help to keep SubseaWatcher going, even if some people have been less than enthusiastic about gentle swing towards the occasional political opinion. Maybe you can convince your company to stump up for a bit of advertising.
