The group that was founded in France exactly 100 years ago, it bears recalling, has not without reason seen its share price stagnate in 2026 at exactly the same level it was at two decades earlier.
More recently, in 2023 and then in 2025, we voiced - and subsequent developments proved us right - a measure of scepticism about both the group's valuation and the perhaps slightly over-enthusiastic comments of its chief executive, Olivier Le Peuch.
Heir to a long tradition that has often seen it operate in a range of markets reputed to be difficult - almost a century ago, it was already working in Stalin's USSR - and under other skies that were more or less unsavoury - the group remains very active in Russia - SLB was also a pioneer in Venezuela, where it is currently a partner of Chevron.
As evidenced by the striking stock-market rally of recent days, the Venezuelan story has just delivered an unexpected shot in the arm to the group's market capitalisation, which now identifies under the otherwise far less tongue-twisting name of SLB. This despite a slumping crude price, which discourages investment by the majors and squeezes the margins of their service providers.
In addition, while Maduro's grab is an undeniable political coup, Donald Trump's pie-in-the-sky plans will no doubt remain a dead letter in a sector where projects running into tens of billions of dollars in investment are undertaken only once their profitability is well assured.
In this context, shareholders of US oil groups will no doubt be far less adventurous than the mercurial American president. See on this subject Venezuelan oil: between pie-in-the-sky plans and on the ground reality.
So should we get carried away by the SLB story? Probably not, because the group's economic underperformance remains acute over the long term, with still-painful stagnation in its revenue and operating profit, including since the acquisition of ChampionX for $8bn.
The group certainly returns around $4bn a year to its shareholders, but relative to a market capitalisation of $70bn and an enterprise value of $80bn, it is hard to see a particularly attractive valuation here.
