Be the Artificial Lift Rep Production Engineers Already Know

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Written by Unrth

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.

The production engineer picks the lift, writes the workover AFE, and lives with how long the pump runs. Before he gives a new rep a trial, he wants to see how your lift ran on wells like his, and he'd rather already know your name. Get known the way good lift reps earn it in person: show up where lift people meet, and put your run-life record where he looks, under your own name.

Who Picks the Lift: One Operator's Production Engineer Posting

Permian Resources posted a Production Engineer job for its Texas Delaware Basin wells on June 24, 2026. The engineer is based in Midland and reports to the Lead Production Engineer, and the posting was still listed when we checked on October 26, 2026. Read it as a map of the person you're selling to:

  • He manages a production area with an emphasis on new and existing horizontal wells producing on gas lift, ESP, and rod pump.

  • He designs, optimizes, and troubleshoots gas lift, ESP, rod pump, jet pump, and plunger lift.

  • He writes the AFEs and procedures for flowbacks, workovers, recompletions, and well maintenance, and he coordinates with the wellsite supervisor and service providers on workovers.

  • He analyzes well failures and recommends changes for optimization and run-time improvement.

  • He tracks lease operating expense and capital spending against budget.

  • He spends time in the field every week.

Two of those lines are about you. The failures he analyzes may be on your equipment, and the field days are when he sees it running or sitting idle. He's judging run time and cost, so a rep who already talks in run time and cost is an easier rep to give a trial. The rest of his week is in selling to an oil and gas production engineer.

Where the New Wells Are: Permian Operators by Rig Count

As of April 10, 2026, Enverus ranked ExxonMobil first among Permian operators with 34.0 rigs, followed by Occidental at 20.0, Diamondback at 15.8, ConocoPhillips at 14.2, EOG at 11.8, and Coterra at 11.7, as reported by PBOG Magazine. Those counts cover the whole Permian, not one sub-basin, and they come from before Devon Energy and Coterra completed their merger on May 7, 2026, so Coterra's rigs now sit under Devon. Across the basin, Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026.

Which lift you sell decides which engineers to get known by first. A Texas Tech paper by Bassel Eissa, published April 9, 2025 for the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course, used public data to find that the Midland Basin skews toward ESPs and rod pumps, with lower gas-oil ratios and shallower wells, while the deeper, gassier Delaware Basin shows more gas lift. The authors say the data shows industry preferences, not firm conclusions. The basin-by-basin picture is in artificial lift sales in the Permian Basin.

The Lift Vendor Bench Changed Hands

The names across the table changed in 2025. SLB completed its $7.8 billion acquisition of ChampionX on July 16, 2025, combining ChampionX's production chemicals and artificial lift business with SLB's portfolio, according to World Oil. Flowco bought 155 high-pressure gas lift and vapor recovery systems from Archrock for about $71 million in cash, a deal Flowco said enhances its Permian Basin presence.

Operators change hands too. A Foley and Lardner note from July 2026 says acquirers typically review the oilfield service agreements they inherit, then consolidate, renegotiate, or replace overlapping vendors. When your customer's door gets a new logo, the vendor list gets a second look, and you want to be a name the new engineer has already heard. How to get chosen when operators lean on familiar names is in how to get an operator to choose you when they stick with the names they know.

Where Lift People Meet: First Monday and the Short Course

In Midland, lift people meet over lunch. The First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club meets at the Petroleum Club of Midland, 11:15 am to 12:30 pm, $15 cash at the door. The club's page says the first Monday of each month, and the calendar listed November 2 and December 7 when we checked on October 26, 2026. The full rundown, including why that lunch is the last thing to cut, is in the First Monday lift lunch and staying known if budgets get cut.

Once a year the bigger crowd gathers at the Southwestern Petroleum Short Course. Its next conference is April 19 to 22, 2027, the site reports average attendance over 1,300, and there is exhibit space for more than 90 companies. The papers are where operators and lift companies put results in front of each other: the Texas Tech paper above is one, and a Devon paper written with Liberty Lift Solutions is another. A paper or a talk built on an operator's own wells, presented with that operator's engineer, puts your name next to his.

How Buyers Size Up a Vendor They Have Not Met

These are cross-industry numbers, not oilfield numbers, so read them that way. In 6sense's 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report, 94% of buying groups ranked their shortlist before engaging sellers, and 77% of 3,744 buyers said their first vendor conversation was with the vendor that eventually won. Three in four buyers (75%) personally knew sellers from the vendors they evaluated, and 68% already knew a seller from the vendor that won. In the 2025 Edelman and LinkedIn thought leadership report, 73% of target decision-makers agreed that thought leadership shows a vendor's potential value better than conventional marketing or sales materials.

If that pattern holds in the oilfield, the engineer may already have a short list by the time you call, and the rep he already knows has the inside track. A supply rep's version of this problem is in how OCTG, PVF, and pump reps get known, and the completions version is in how to get a meeting with a completions engineer before the trial pad.

What He Should Find When He Looks You Up

I learned where the good material comes 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 strategy and innovation 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. Or a rod pump. Your best stories came from location too.

The Warm Walk-In™ is how we turn those stories into a name an engineer recognizes: we capture them 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. What belongs there for a lift rep:

  • Run life, told plainly. The well type, the lift, the problem, and how long it ran after, with nothing in it the operator wouldn't want public.

  • The failures you helped solve. The posting says the engineer analyzes failures for run-time improvement. Show him you think the same way.

  • The question every new well raises. ESP or rod pump comes up again and again, so answer it once, under your own name.

  • Where you'll be. The next First Monday lunch, the Short Course in April 2027, and the part of the basin you're working this month.

The profile, the posts, the voice guide, and the stories are yours, and they go with you if the logo on your shirt changes. Everything else we've written for lift reps starts at artificial lift and production sales.

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 Run Life Beats Reputation

A production engineer weighs run life on wells like his. If your pump keeps running, that record speaks louder than any post, and if it keeps failing, no profile will save the account. Being known gets you the first look and maybe the trial. The wells decide the rest. Fix the equipment problem first, then let your name carry the run-life record to the engineers who haven't seen it yet.

Get Your Bison Walk-Around

If a production engineer in your territory looked you up tonight, find out what he'd see first. 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.

Unrth https://www.unrth.com
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The First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club in Midland, and Staying Known If Budgets Get Cut