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.

One of the clients I visit in Midland is Hondo Resources, a water transfer company. I'm out there in my white hard hat, my safety glasses, and my yellow gas monitor clipped to my chest, because that's the proper way to wear it, not on your helmet. I get to talk to the men and women who have their hands on the equipment and their hands in the mud, living it day to day, and honestly, that's where the best innovation happens. You find the best ideas from people who aren't in the office.

If you do business development in water midstream, the business of gathering, disposing of, recycling, and moving the water that comes up with the oil, those are the people to listen to. In the Permian that is a lot of water, and the Texas rules on where it can go changed in 2025. Hear how the changes land on location, then be the one who explains them to everyone else first. That's your reason to be in the room.

How Much Water the Permian Makes

WaterBridge's 2025 prospectus, citing B3 Insights and Pickering Energy Partners, puts Delaware Basin produced water at about 1.6 million barrels a day in 2014 and about 13.2 million in 2024. Citing Enverus data, it says about 3.7 barrels of water came up with every barrel of Delaware oil in 2024.

Across the whole Permian, UT Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology puts produced water at about 21 million barrels a day in 2025, against frac water demand of 7.9 million. By the bureau's count, about 70 percent of Permian frac water came from produced water in 2025. Every one of those barrels needs a home.

The Disposal Rules Changed

The Railroad Commission's Permian Basin disposal well guidelines, in effect from June 1, 2025, double the area-of-review radius from a quarter mile to half a mile. They also limit maximum surface injection pressure by geologic properties and cap daily injection volumes by reservoir pressure, for new and amended disposal well permit applications.

The Legislature moved too. Pillsbury's June 9, 2025 summary lays out three bills:

  • HB 49, effective September 1, 2025, shields people who possess, treat and use, or transfer produced water for a beneficial use from tort liability tied to that treatment, use, or exposure. The exceptions are gross negligence, intentional wrongful acts, and negligence combined with regulatory violations.

  • HB 4426 makes commercial surface disposal facility permits valid for a maximum of 10 years, for permits issued or renewed after September 1, 2025.

  • SB 1145 authorizes the Railroad Commission to issue permits for land application of produced water.

Write down once, in your own words, what each change means for your customers, and you have something worth sending before anyone asks for a rate. Our HB 49 guide goes deeper.

Who Is Moving the Barrels

WaterBridge handled about 2.6 million barrels a day of produced water in the second quarter of 2026, up 6 percent from the first quarter, according to its Q2 2026 results. Its 2025 annual report says its top five customers made up about 51 percent of its water revenue.

Western Midstream closed its purchase of Aris Water Solutions on October 15, 2025, adding about 830 miles of produced-water pipeline and 625,000 dedicated acres. Its 2025 annual report says a single operator's production made up 61 percent of throughput on its Delaware Basin water systems at December 31, 2025. When one operator is most of a system's barrels, that operator's water desk matters.

Who Runs the Water Desk

Permian Resources' September 4, 2026 posting for a Water Resources Engineer in Midland describes a role that reports to the Water Resource Manager. The job, in its own list:

  • Reconciling run tickets and meter data against water purchase statements.

  • Tracking costs and budgets.

  • Working with third-party vendors and regulators.

  • Forecasting water needs and flowback volumes with operations teams, and issuing supply forecasts to third parties.

  • Tracking ROW, permits, and SUAs.

The same desk that checks run tickets sends supply forecasts to third parties, so it's a desk worth knowing by name. More in selling to oil and gas water management.

Guides for Water and Midstream BD

Water contracts run long, and it is easy to go quiet between them. Permian Produced Water: How Water BD Stays Known Between Contract Windows covers those years, and the rest of the basin is in the Permian Basin field guides.

Two shorter reads: getting operators to see you as a peer instead of another vendor, and which oil and gas trade shows are worth going to.

Who Actually Saw His Posts

For water BD, what matters most in this founder's results is who was reading: 56% of the people who saw his posts work in oil and gas, the same room you are trying to get into.

A fourth-generation Permian service-company founder who hated marketing. His board nearly killed the project over ROI. We spent June to October 2025 building his name, then started posting for him, in his voice, with his yes on every post.

From Sep 15, 2025 to Oct 19, 2026: 270,955 impressions, 104,386 people reached, and followers up from 1,974 to 4,232, with 61% of them working in oil and gas. LinkedIn's Social Selling Index ranks him in the top 1% of sales professionals in oil and gas.

No name, by policy. It's his name, not ours. Read the full story.

The Warm Walk-In™ in Four Moves

The disposal rules, HB 49, and the dedication question are what move one is for: each one written down once, in your words. This is The Warm Walk-In™:

  1. Capture. One story dump a quarter, typed or spoken from the truck.

  2. Rig up. Positioning, voice, profile, one signature offer. Four to six weeks. Yours forever.

  3. Run the rotation. Posts in your voice on a fixed calendar, three to five a week, never more than one a day. Your name in the right conversations. A fresh lead magnet every quarter.

  4. Read the quarter. A plain-English video review every three months. Saves, messages, meetings. Not likes.

When the Contract Runs 15 Years

WaterBridge reported that most of its produced water contracts carried a 15-year initial term at the end of 2025, with a weighted average remaining life of about 10.4 years across about 2.4 million dedicated acres. LinkedIn can get you into the room where a deal that long is made. It will not carry the vote.

If the acreage you want is dedicated elsewhere for years, no post changes that. What a known name can do is keep you in the conversation until the window opens.

That conversation goes on whether you're in it or not. In the Permian, everyone knows everyone, so mistakes are public, and it's a tight, talkative community where one happy client tells five people. In water, one happy operator who talks about you while the window is shut can do more for you than any pitch you send the week it opens.

Get Your Bison Walk-Around

Before the next window opens, let us walk around your 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.

Get your Bison Walk-Around

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.