Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, posted a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit as robust international activity offset stiff competition in North America.

Fracking, drilling seismic studies and other lucrative services for oil producers across most of the Middle East, Asia and Latin America helped the company’s profit top analysts’ estimates for the ninth straight quarter.

Intense competition with Halliburton and Baker Hughes for work in North America’s vast shale fields, though, combined with weak natural gas prices, eroded regional results. Without strong sales from the US Gulf of Mexico, North American revenue would have dipped.

“The main challenge in the North America land market is still pricing,” chief executive Paal Kibsgaard said on a conference call with investors.

Negotiations for new contracts with several key North American customers should further dent results, with pricing falling, he said. Statoil and other international energy firms are Schlumberger’s largest North American customers and have used the oversupply of oilfield services to their advantage.

Despite tepid North American growth, Schlumberger expects the global economy to improve in 2014 and oil demand to rise, with double-digit earnings growth across the company for the year, Kibsgaard said.

Schlumberger has the lowest exposure to North America among the big four oilfield service providers. International markets brought in about two-thirds of Schlumberger’s 2013 revenue of $45.27 billion.

Middle Eastern revenue jumped 5 per cent in the quarter, helped by activity in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but a temporary shutdown of operations in southern Iraq in November, following a protest, slightly dented fourth-quarter results, the company said.

Schlumberger suspended activity in Iraq in November after dozens of Shi’ite Muslim workers and tribesmen, accusing a foreign security adviser of insulting their religion, stormed the Schlumberger camp in North Rumaila and wrecked offices.