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 26, 2026.
If the sponsorship budget gets cut, the cheapest seat in the Midland lift business stays open: the First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club, where lunch is $15, paid in cash at the door of the Petroleum Club of Midland. Keep going to it before you pay for anything else. Then keep your name in front of the engineers you met there between lunches, so the next lift change goes to a rep they already know.
First Monday at the Petroleum Club of Midland: The Basics and Next Dates
The club's page lives on the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course site. It says the club meets the first Monday of each month at the Petroleum Club of Midland, 505 West Wall Street, to talk through artificial lift problems and solutions. Lunch runs from 11:15 am to 12:30 pm and costs $15, cash at the door. An RSVP isn't required, but the page encourages one so the Petroleum Club can plan the room.
When we checked the calendar on October 26, 2026, it listed November 2 and December 7, then January 11, February 1, and March 1. January 11 is the second Monday of the month, so check the page before you drive over in a holiday month. Each meeting pairs a sponsoring company with a speaker. A sponsorship is a line item somebody has to approve. The $15 lunch fits in your wallet.
Who Has Offices in Midland
A lot of lift decisions get made by people who work out of Midland. Diamondback Energy is headquartered there. Permian Resources' production engineer posting from June 24, 2026 is based in Midland, and that engineer designs and troubleshoots gas lift, ESP, rod pump, jet pump, and plunger lift (every line of that posting is in how lift reps get known by production engineers). The longer list, with sources and dates, is in our seller's map of oil companies in Midland.
One supplier's job posting shows how the selling side reads the town. B-P Supply's business development posting, listed in Monahans on September 29, 2026, covers rod pump and TAC, production supply, and measurement, and it asks the hire to win access to production engineers, facilities engineers, and procurement. The territory takes in Midland corporate offices plus operator offices in Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, and Denver, and the hire has to live in Midland, Odessa, or Monahans. The lunch reaches the people in Midland. Your name has to reach the rest.
New Midland Basin Wells Keep Coming
New wells need lift, and the Midland Basin keeps adding them. Diamondback Energy drilled 215 gross wells and completed 315 in the Midland Basin in the first half of 2026, according to its second quarter 2026 results, and it averaged 1,018 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second quarter. A 2025 Short Course paper by Devon and Liberty Lift Solutions says most operators choose an ESP as a well's first lift and later move to gas lift, rod pumps, or jet lift, while others start with gas lift or rod lift. A well completed this year can need a lift decision now and another one down the road.
The rigs are still turning, too. Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026, up from 251 in the week ending October 17, 2025. Rig counts move week to week, and nobody can tell you which week the budget memo lands. That's why the plan below starts with what costs the least.
If the Sponsorship Budget Gets Cut
The number to watch is breakeven. The Dallas Fed survey's March 2026 breakevens were $69 a barrel in the Midland Basin and $63 in the Delaware, figures the EIA cited in September 2026 alongside its forecast that Permian crude will average 6.8 million barrels a day in 2026, 3% more than in 2025. If oil drifts toward those numbers, expect budgets to get read line by line, and sponsorships, booths, and dinners are easy lines to cut.
Deals cut lines too, on their own schedule. A Foley and Lardner note from July 2026 says companies that buy an operator typically review the service agreements they inherit, then consolidate, renegotiate, or replace overlapping vendors. Either way, you want your name known to more people than the one buyer whose budget just changed.
Our answer when a rep asks what happens when oil drops: cold outreach gets cut, and reputation doesn't. A known name is the cheapest lead you've got when budgets tighten. Something I've noticed about the Permian: everyone knows everyone, so mistakes are public, and one happy client tells five people. That kind of word travels for free in a bad year. The wider playbook is in what to do when oil drops and your pipeline dries up, and the supply side is in how to sell PVF and OCTG if oil prices drop.
Keep Your Name Working Between Lunches
One lunch a month is a good habit and a short window. Between lunches, your name needs somewhere else to live. The Warm Walk-In™ is how we keep it in front of the engineers you met: we capture your field stories once a quarter, rebuild your profile so it reads like the work, and run posts in your voice on a fixed calendar, three to five a week, with your yes on every one. Every quarter you get a plain-English video read on what got saved, who messaged, and what meetings came from it.
The raw material is the same whether you hand it off or do it yourself, and only you have it:
The wells you kept running. The lift, the problem, the fix, and what happened after, told the way you'd tell it at the table, with nothing in it the operator wouldn't want public.
The question you answer at every lunch. ESP or rod pump comes up again and again, and answering it once, under your own name saves you from answering it well by well.
What you heard in the room. A speaker's point you agree with, or one you'd push back on, written up the same week while it's fresh.
Who you are after the job. The truck, the family, and why you're still in this business. People out here relate to the person before the product.
All of it is yours. The profile, the posts, the voice guide, and the stories go with you if the logo on your shirt changes, and more than one lift business changed hands in 2025 (the deals are in who picks the lift and where they meet).
A Permian Founder in His Industry's Top 1%
The founder of a Permian service company, fourth generation in the oilfield, hated marketing. From September 15, 2025 to October 19, 2026, his posts earned 270,955 impressions and reached 104,386 people, and his followers grew 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.
Where the $15 Lunch Wins
I always know I'm really starting to get into the grime and dirt of the Midland Permian Basin when the sheets at the Hilton where I stay already have sand and dirt in them, even though the staff supposedly cleaned the room. Even the highest-rated hotel, an 8 out of 10, still has dirt and dust from people's work boots in and around the entire room, and sometimes, unfortunately, in the sheets. That's just the reality of doing business in the Permian, and it's why being in the room counts for so much here.
A $15 cash lunch puts you in a room of Midland lift people every month at almost no cost. In a downturn, keep going to that before you pay for anything else. If the engineers you want are in that room, the lunch beats any post you or we could write. Posts keep the conversation going between lunches and reach the engineers in Houston and Denver who don't make the drive. If you're weighing a big show against the lunch, read how to get real business out of OTC and other conferences first, and for the rest of the lift picture, start at artificial lift and production sales.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
If an engineer you met at the last lunch looked you up tonight, find out what he'd see. 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
First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club (Southwestern Petroleum Short Course), checked October 26, 2026: place, time, $15 cash lunch, RSVP note, and meeting calendar.
Diamondback Energy second quarter 2026 results, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, August 3, 2026: Midland Basin wells drilled and completed, and production.
Permian Resources, Production Engineer, Texas Delaware Basin (R-100338), posted June 24, 2026, still listed October 26, 2026: Midland base and lift duties.
B-P Supply, Business Development Representative, posted September 29, 2026, viewed October 17, 2026: product lines, buyer titles, and territory.
Optimizing the Lifecycle of Permian Basin Wells (Short Course paper 2025005), 2025: ESP first, then other lift.
Oil and Gas 360, Baker Hughes rig count, week ending October 16, 2026: 272 Permian rigs.
Oil and Gas 360, Baker Hughes rig count, week ending October 17, 2025: 251 Permian rigs, the year-earlier base.
EIA Today in Energy: United States on track for record crude oil production in 2026, September 10, 2026: Permian forecast and the March 2026 Dallas Fed breakevens.
Foley and Lardner, Your Customer Just Got Bought, July 22, 2026: how acquirers handle inherited service agreements.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
