Where Do I Find Oil and Gas Sales Leads?

answers

By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 20, 2026.

His customer base was aging out, and the younger engineers didn't know his company existed. That's where the Permian founder we work with, a fourth-generation oilfield man, stood when we started building his name where they could find it, and by October 2026, 61% of his followers worked in oil and gas, with drilling engineer the most common job title among them. Read the full story.

No list of names would have fixed his problem, and your book may have the same gap. The work itself is easy to find in three public places: drilling permits, the weekly rig count, and the deals that hand acreage to a new operator. Whether the buyer then calls you or somebody else often comes down to which name he already knows.

Where Oilfield Leads Come From: Permits, Rigs, and Deals

Each one answers a different question. A permit says an operator means to drill. A running rig says the drilling has started. A closed deal says the acreage has a new owner, so the first thing to learn is who runs it now and how they buy.

Two 2026 deals show it. Devon Energy and Coterra Energy closed their all-stock merger on May 7, 2026, and the combined company runs as Devon Energy out of Houston. Matador closed its $1.255 billion purchase of Paloma Permian on October 1, 2026, adding about 16,500 net acres in Eddy and Lea Counties. If Coterra or Paloma was on your list, the name on that account changed, for you and for every rep you compete with. Working a new operator after a deal has its own playbook: how to get in front of a new operator after an acquisition.

Reading the Railroad Commission's Monthly Permit Count

The Railroad Commission of Texas puts out drilling permit numbers every month. In September 2026 it issued 323 permits to drill new oil or gas holes in District 8, the most of any district, out of 759 original permits statewide. In September 2025, District 8 had 283, so the count is up about 14 percent year over year.

District 8 spans 20 counties, including Midland, Ector, Martin, and Andrews on the Midland side and Reeves, Loving, Ward, and Pecos to the west. The 323 is one total for all of them. It won't tell you which side got busier or which operator filed, so read it for direction and do the account work yourself. The basin-wide numbers live in our Permian Basin field guides.

Using the Rig Count Without Chasing It Every Week

Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026, down 2 from the week before. A two-rig move is noise. In the week to October 17, 2025, the count was 251, so the October 16, 2026 count was 21 rigs, about 8 percent, higher. Check it once a month against the same week a year earlier and you'll see the trend without chasing the wiggle.

The count doesn't name operators. A ranking does. In April 2026, before Devon and Coterra closed, Enverus ranked ExxonMobil first among Permian operators with 34.0 rigs, then Occidental at 20.0, Diamondback at 15.8, ConocoPhillips at 14.2, EOG at 11.8, and Coterra at 11.7, as PBOG Magazine reported. Coterra's rigs went to Devon with the merger. If the count turns down and takes your pipeline with it, read what to do when oil drops and your pipeline dries up.

Why the Buyer Usually Makes the First Move

A lead list assumes you make the first contact. 6sense's 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report says the buyer usually does. In 2025, buyers first reached out to sellers 61% of the way through the buying journey, compared with 69% before, and buyers started 79% of those first contacts themselves. Before talking to any seller, 94% of buying groups had already ranked their shortlist, and 77% of buyers said their first vendor conversation was with the vendor that won.

So by the time an engineer picks up the phone, I'd bet he has done most of his homework, and the names he calls are ones he knew before he started. A list can tell you which operator to target. It can't put you on his shortlist. The most expensive hour in the patch is the one you spend cold-calling, and if you're deciding how much of the week to keep dialing, read our answer on whether cold calling is dead in oil and gas sales.

The Leads You Never Dial For

There's a kind of lead no permit report will ever show you. Across our clients, from individual owner-operators to companies with eight manufacturing facilities around the world, I hear the same feedback once their names get bigger on LinkedIn. Their customers know when a new flange comes out. They know when somebody's going to be in their part of the world. And the ones who aren't ready to buy anything still pass the name along: "I know someone who does that. He talks about it all the time."

That's a lead you never had to find. It came from a man who wasn't buying, telling one who needed it. You only get those when you're the one who talks about the work, out where people can see it.

Buying a List vs. Being the Name They Know

If you need names to call this week, a list tool is faster. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core lists at $119.99 a month per license, a price LinkedIn marks as an estimate (checked October 17, 2026). You get names this week, and you still make the cold call.

Becoming the name buyers already know is slower. Every OilMoney client starts with The Rig-Up, and nobody buys The Rotation alone. The minimum first commitment for one seat is $23,200: $8,500 for The Rig-Up plus six months of The Rotation at $2,450 a month. A truck stuck in the mud needs traction before it moves, and The Rig-Up is the traction: your positioning, your voice guide, your rebuilt LinkedIn profile, and one signature offer, all of it yours if you change companies. Then The Rotation puts posts in your voice on a fixed calendar, and nothing goes out without your yes. Nobody can honestly promise you a return on that, and we don't.

That's what The Warm Walk-In™ does for a field rep: it gets your name to the buyer before you do. You can run both, a list to find the operator and a known name so the call lands warm. If you'd rather pay someone to book meetings, compare OilMoney vs an outbound or appointment-setting agency.

Before You Buy Another List

A list gives you his name. Find out what he gets when he looks up yours.

Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first.

Get your Bison Walk-Around

Everything else we build for field reps is on our page for oilfield service sales reps.

Sources and As-Of Dates

The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.

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