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.
A production engineer takes over the well once drilling is done, tracks what it makes, and looks for ways to raise extraction, so whatever you sell into a producing well stays on his watch for as long as it's on his wells. Win him with a record on wells like his, and show up where lift problems get talked about.
I learned where the best ideas come from before I came back to oil and gas, in food franchising. The people in more than 300 locations around the world making pretzels had way better innovations than I could have ever dreamed up in the headquarters office in Pasadena, California. So here I am, all the way from Pasadena to Midland, still getting the best ideas from talking to the people who have their hands on the thing you're selling day to day. Doesn't matter whether it's water hose piping or pretzels.
For your pump, your chemical, or your workover, one of those people is the production engineer. He lives with your equipment long after the sale, so ask what he's seeing on his wells before you tell him what yours will do.
What a Production Engineer Does
The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook lays three petroleum engineering specialties side by side. Drilling engineers design ways to construct oil or gas wells. Completions engineers decide how to finish building wells so oil or gas flows up from underground. Production engineers take over wells after drilling, track output, and look for ways to raise extraction.
That last one is the man to know if you sell into producing wells. The completion engineer's job comes before his (see Selling to a Completion Engineer), and the operator's representative on location gets his own page in Selling to the Oilfield Company Man.
Lift, Workovers, and LOE on One Desk
Permian Resources' June 24, 2026 posting for a production engineer on its Texas Delaware Basin team shows how much can land on one desk. The engineer is based in Midland, reports to the Lead Production Engineer, and covers:
Flowback and initial lift install
Production surveillance
Workover design, plus writing the AFEs for workovers
Chemical programs
LOE (lease operating expense) stewardship
Designing and troubleshooting gas lift, ESP, rod pump, jet pump, and plunger lift
Coordinating with the wellsite supervisor and service providers
If You Sell Artificial Lift
In this posting he designs and troubleshoots all five lift types, so if you sell ESPs, your pitch sits next to gas lift, rod pump, jet pump, and plunger lift on his desk, as well as next to the other ESP vendors. Know the case for and against each one on the wells he runs, even the ones you don't sell.
If You Sell Production Chemicals
Chemical programs sit in the same job as LOE stewardship. Your program lands on the same desk that watches lease operating expense, so show what it does for the well in terms he can set next to its cost.
If You Sell Well Service
He designs the workover and writes its AFE, then coordinates with the wellsite supervisor and service providers to get it done. The engineer is in the room before the job, and the supervisor is on location during it. Be known to both.
Midland Leans ESP and Rod Pump, Delaware Runs More Gas Lift
A Texas Tech paper by Bassel Eissa, published April 9, 2025 for the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course, used public data to look at lift across the Permian. It found the Midland Basin skews toward ESPs and rod pumps, with lower gas-oil ratios and shallower depths, while the Delaware Basin shows a higher share of gas lift, because its wells run deeper and its gas-oil ratios run higher. The paper itself says its data lacks operational detail, so read the split as industry preference, not a verdict on any one well.
Use it to know which conversation you're walking into, not to tell an engineer what his wells need. The Permian Resources job above sits on the Delaware side, where the paper found more gas lift, so know the gas lift side of the conversation before you walk into a Delaware production team, even if gas lift isn't what you sell. For the basin-by-basin view, see artificial lift sales in the Permian Basin. For the question you keep answering, see ESP vs rod pump: answer it once, under your own name.
When Wells Change Lift
Lift isn't forever. A 2025 Southwestern Petroleum Short Course paper on the lifecycle of Permian wells says most operators choose an ESP as the first form of lift and later move to gas lift, rod pumps, or jet lift, while others start with gas lift or rod lift.
That change is a sales window, and in the Permian Resources job the person closest to it is easy to spot. The same engineer handles the initial lift install, designs and troubleshoots lift, designs workovers, and writes their AFEs. The person who put the first lift in the well is the person you want to know before the second one goes in. If he learns your name after the change is already designed, you're late.
If lift is your trade, our page on artificial lift sales covers how we keep your lift know-how under your own name.
The Monthly Lift Lunch in Midland
In Midland, lift gets talked about over lunch once a month. The First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club meets on the first Monday of each month at the Petroleum Club of Midland to discuss artificial lift problems and solutions. Lunch is $15, paid in cash at the door, as of October 17, 2026, and the club's calendar lists November 2 and December 7, 2026 as the next two meetings.
Bring cash. Bring a problem you solved, explained plainly, and leave the brochure in the truck. The club exists to talk through lift problems and solutions, so a fix on a real well is the thing worth having in your pocket. For the rest of the town, see our map of oil companies in Midland.
Southwestern Petroleum Short Course 2027
Both papers on this page came out of the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course. Its site lists the next conference as April 19 to 22, 2027, with average attendance of over 1,300 and exhibit space for more than 90 companies. If you go, go with one lift problem you can explain plainly, the same one you'd bring to the lunch.
What a Lift Engineer Checks Before a Vendor Meeting
Expect a man who designs and troubleshoots five lift types to ask how your equipment ran on wells like his. Bring run history on similar wells, in the same basin if you have it, and be plain about the failures as well as the wins.
He may also look you up before he agrees to meet. More than half of the decision-makers in the 2025 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report said they use thought leadership to vet a seller (we go through those numbers in building a personal brand next to the company brand). If what an engineer finds under your name explains one lift problem clearly, you walk in with some of the explaining already done. Our answer on explaining a complex oilfield service so the buyer gets it the first time shows how.
The trade does read: as of October 19, 2026, 61% of the LinkedIn followers of the Permian founder we work with worked in oil and gas, and that's the crowd you want reading you. Read the full story.
The $15 Lunch Comes Before the Profile
A production engineer judges a lift vendor on how the equipment runs on wells like his. No profile changes a run history, and no post keeps a pump running. And the monthly lift lunch in Midland costs almost nothing to attend: $15, cash at the door, as of October 2026. If you sell lift around Midland and you aren't at that lunch yet, go before you spend a dollar on your profile.
A profile helps between those moments, not instead of them. Between the lunch and the meeting, and between the install and the lift change, it keeps your name and your thinking in front of the engineer, so when the next well needs a decision, you're already someone he has read. That's what The Warm Walk-In™ does for a lift hand: your field fixes, written once in your voice, with your yes on every post and the profile yours to keep.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
Before the next first Monday, get a straight read on your own profile.
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.
Sources and As-Of Dates
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Petroleum Engineers. Last modified August 27, 2026. The drilling, completions, and production engineer descriptions.
Permian Resources careers: Production Engineer, Texas Delaware Basin (R-100338). Posted June 24, 2026; viewed October 18, 2026. The lift, workover AFE, chemical, and LOE duties.
(2025060) Artificial Lift Trends in Permian Basin: Insights from Publicly Available Data (Southwestern Petroleum Short Course). Published April 9, 2025. The Midland and Delaware lift split and the paper's own caveat.
(2025005) Optimizing the Lifecycle of Permian Basin Wells (Southwestern Petroleum Short Course, paper by Devon and Liberty Lift Solutions). 2025 (year from the paper number). The ESP-first pattern and later lift changes.
First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club (Southwestern Petroleum Short Course). Page accessed October 17, 2026. The meeting place, the $15 cash lunch, and the next two dates.
Southwestern Petroleum Short Course (official site). As of October 17, 2026. The April 19 to 22, 2027 dates, attendance, and exhibit space.
LinkedIn Shares New Report on the Value of Thought Leadership Content (2025 Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, chart 1). July 14, 2025. 56% of target and 55% of hidden decision-makers use thought leadership in vetting; B2B buyers in general, not oil and gas.
The full proof story. The founder's LinkedIn analytics export, followers and demographics sheets, as of October 19, 2026, held by Unrth. Followers in oil and gas.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.