Cork-based help desk to close with loss of 37 jobs

CORK-BASED Schlumberger Information Solutions will close its help desk on December 19th with the potential loss of 37 jobs.

A spokeswoman for the subsidiary of the French firm, which provides services to oilfield operators, confirmed that its Cork IT help desk would close in December.

"The employees have been informed and, while every effort will be made to find alternative positions within the company, it is likely that a number of employees will, unfortunately, face redundancy," Schlumberger said in a statement.

It said there was a "potential loss of 37 jobs" out of a total headcount of 49. "The closure has arisen as a result of a need to restructure service-desk operations to match company needs."

It is understood the Cork operation lost support and training contracts with a number of third parties, including oil producer ConocoPhillips, luxury goods maker LVMH and British American Tobacco in recent years.

In the last two years, the offices in Little Island had primarily been providing technical support to Schlumberger's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The most recently filed accounts for Schlumberger Information Solutions show it generated a pretax profit of €1.7 million in 2007, down from €2.4 million the previous year. It paid a dividend to its parent, Schlumberger, which is registered in the Netherlands, of €1,119,680. Following this payment, the Cork business had retained profits of €2.8 million.

When the Cork facility was established in 2002, it was reported that Schlumberger was investing more than $10 million (€7.5 million) and would create 200 jobs. Schlumberger Ltd, the ultimate parent of Schlumberger Information Solutions, which previously traded as Schlumberger Oilfield Data, had revenues of $23.28 billion in 2007 and posted a pretax profit of $6.7 billion.

Last night the company said it "intends to extend as much reasonable assistance as possible to those employees affected".

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times