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Energy companies, coping with a 42% decline in oil prices during the last three months of 2014, are expected to cut spending in the U.S. by as much as 35 percent this year, according to Cowen & Co. The number of onshore U.S. rigs could fall by as much as 750 this year, Wells Fargo & Co. said in a note yesterday.

“Clearly we’re seeing a drop-off in activity,” Stephen Gengaro, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. in New York, said in a phone interview before the release. “The first and second quarter is where you start to see the deterioration in the year-over-year comparisons.”

Schlumberger said the one-time costs for the quarter were the result of job cuts, changes in its seismic unit and devaluation of Venezuela’s currency.

Shares in oilfield-services companies, which help customers find and produce oil and natural gas, were the first to fall as crude prices declined. Service companies in the Standard & Poor’s Index dropped 20 percent in the quarter, more than the 18 percent decline for producers.

Global Spending

Exploration and production spending globally is expected to drop 17% to $571-billion, Jim Crandell, an analyst at Cowen, wrote in a Jan. 7 research note. Schlumberger has the smallest exposure to North America compared to peers, generating a dollar of sales in the region for every US$3 globally.

With oil prices failing to stabilize, some producers are waiting to announce plans for 2015, making first-quarter earnings estimates for Schlumberger “still a bit of a guess,” said Gengaro, who rates the company a buy and doesn’t own the shares.