“This has probably been the most challenging quarter in past decades,” Schlumberger’s chief executive Olivier Le Peuch said in the second-quarter results release of the world’s largest oilfield services provider. The U.S. oilfield services sector saw the worst of this downturn in the second quarter when producers dramatically cut drilling and completion activity and capital programs in the wake of the worst oil price rout in recent memory. In the third quarter, U.S. oil producers brought some of the curtailed production back online and started adding rigs—albeit in slim numbers—for the first time since price crashed at the end of the first quarter. The oilfield services sector breathed a collective sigh of relief that the worst of the crisis in the upstream has passed, and things couldn’t go worse than they did in the second quarter. However, the recovery will likely take years, while the outlook is still uncertain […]