Frac Sales After Simul-Frac: Faster Crews, Tighter Pricing, and Your Name

guides

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.

Simul-frac means fracturing more than one well at the same time. On a simul-frac pad, a bad day costs more than one well, so the engineer choosing a crew leans on names he already trusts. The crew's record and a sharp bid still win the work. Your job is to be one of those trusted names before the program goes out for bid.

Simul-Frac in 2025: More Than Half of Permian Wells, About 100 Crews

By the American Petroleum Institute's count, about 3,600 of the roughly 6,800 Permian wells completed in 2025 used simultaneous hydraulic fracturing. Over the same year, the Permian frac spread count averaged about 100 crews, 3% above the 2024 average. So the basin ran slightly more crews than the year before, and more than half the wells they finished were fractured alongside at least one other well.

That changes what the buyer is weighing. A completions engineer or superintendent picking a crew, a product, or a service line for a simul-frac pad is putting more of his schedule in one set of hands. Long before the bid, he should already know who you are and how you handle a problem on location. Our page on frac and completions sales covers how to stay known without losing family time.

More Locations Ahead: Devon's Delaware Plan for 2027

In its second-quarter 2026 results, released August 4, 2026, Devon Energy said it bought 16,300 net acres in the heart of the Delaware Basin at the New Mexico federal lease sale for $2.6 billion, adding about 400 locations, with development planned to start in 2027. Devon also credited better-than-expected well performance, mainly in the Delaware Basin.

That is one company's plan, not a basin forecast, but it puts a place and a start year on future work. Locations that get developed get completed, and somebody on that team will be choosing crews and vendors. Get your name in front of them while the plan is still a plan. For the wider picture, see frac and completions sales in the Permian Basin.

Permits Are Still Coming: District 8 in September 2026

The Railroad Commission of Texas issued 323 permits to drill new oil or gas holes in District 8, the Midland district, in September 2026. That was the most of any district, out of 759 original permits statewide, and up about 14% from District 8's 283 in September 2025.

A permit is permission to drill, not a crew on location, but more District 8 permits still means more wells on somebody's plan. A short post that reads the month's District 8 number in plain English, with the date on it, shows a completions team you watch the same numbers they do. Our Permian Basin page keeps the fuller set of basin numbers.

The other number worth carrying is cost. On September 10, 2026, the EIA forecast Permian crude output at 6.8 million barrels per day for 2026, 3% above 2025, and cited March 2026 Dallas Fed breakevens of $69 a barrel in the Midland Basin and $63 in the Delaware Basin. If you can explain what your service does to cost per well with those breakevens in mind, you are talking about the line the operator works against.

What LinkedIn's AI Feed Means for Your Name

On March 12, 2026, LinkedIn's engineering team announced a new feed ranking system, powered by large language models, that reads more than a thousand of a member's past interactions to decide what he sees, including posts from experts outside his network. In August 2026, LinkedIn's Hari Srinivasan said over a million people had clicked "seems like AI slop" in two weeks, and that content classified as AI slop was getting 40% fewer views than a few weeks earlier.

So the feed can now show a completions engineer a frac rep he has never met, while posts flagged as AI slop lose views. The posts worth writing are the ones only you could write.

I learned where the best ideas come from before I came back to oil and gas. As Head of Marketing at Wetzel's Pretzels, a 300-location consumer brand, I found that the people making pretzels in stores around the world had way better innovations than anything I could have dreamed up in the headquarters office in Pasadena, California. So here I am, all the way from Pasadena to Midland, still getting my 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 pretzels, water hose piping, or a frac spread.

On a simul-frac pad, those hands are yours and the crew's. What went right, what went sideways and how the crew handled it, what you tell a young hand before his first job: that is the post a completions engineer stops to read, and it reads nothing like slop. The Warm Walk-In™ turns those pad stories into posts in your voice while you stay on location, from one story dump a quarter, with your yes on every post before it goes out.

Start with what a buyer sees when he clicks your name, including a LinkedIn banner that works while you are on the pad, and build toward a name in completions sales that outlasts your logo. For where AI fits and where it doesn't, read Will AI replace sales jobs in oil and gas? and the oilfield sales skills AI can't replace.

The Founder Whose Followers Plan Wells

The founder we work with, a fourth-generation oilfield man who founded a service company in the Permian, posts plain stories from his own work, in his own voice. The most common job title among his followers is drilling engineer, the people who plan the wells, and 61% of them work in oil and gas. Read the full story.

Where the Bid and the Crew Still Win

Be straight with yourself about the order of things. With the Permian frac count averaging about 100 crews in 2025, the crew's record on location and a sharp tender sell the next program more directly than a personal brand does. No post makes up for a crew with a bad record or a number that doesn't pencil.

Pricing makes that more true. In the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the third quarter of 2026, the index of prices received by oilfield services firms fell to 16.3 from 24.5, and one services respondent wrote:

"We continue to see pricing pressure from operators."

When you bring it up with a customer, call it what it is: a falling index and one respondent's comment. Together, they say the tender has to be sharp. Where your name helps is earlier and quieter: it can get you on the list and get your bid read by someone who already knows how you work. The crew and the number still close it.

Get Your Bison Walk-Around

Before the next program gets planned, find out what your profile says to the engineer who will pick the crew.

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.

Previous

Minimum Volume Commitment vs Acreage Dedication: Explain It Once, Under Your Own Name
Next

How to Get Known by Oilfield Customers Who Have Never Met You