Frac and Completions Sales in the Permian Basin: Be Known Before the Next Pad

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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 21, 2026.

Your crew just rigged down off a trial pad: pumping went to plan, nobody got hurt, and the tickets are in. Now you're back in the truck, wondering whether the completions engineer will think of your name when he plans the next one.

This guide is for people who sell frac and completions work in the Permian Basin: fleets, wireline, plugs, chemistry, sand, and frac water. Your crew's work on the pad sells the next pad, and your name helps put you in the running when the engineer picks who gets a shot.

About 100 Crews, 6,800 Wells: Permian Completions Activity

The Permian frac spread count averaged about 100 crews in 2025, 3 percent above the 2024 average, per API. API also counts about 6,800 Permian wells completed in 2025, more than half of them (about 3,600) fracked simultaneously, so losing a pad often means losing more than one well.

In its second-quarter 2026 results, released July 29, 2026, ProPetro said industry attrition had meaningfully reduced available frac capacity, and it pointed to early pricing momentum.

The rigs tell you what's coming to the frac crews. Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026. Primary Vision's frac spread count for the whole US was 199 for the week of October 16, 2026, up from 175 a year earlier. Our Permian Basin page keeps the full count.

The Operators Running Completion Programs

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, counting both sides of the basin. What they finish says more to a completions seller:

  • Diamondback completed 168 gross Midland Basin wells in the second quarter of 2026 while drilling 97, per its August 3, 2026 results.

  • Permian Resources guides to about 250 gross wells turned in line in 2026, per its August 5, 2026 earnings release.

  • Devon, combined with Coterra since May 7, 2026, reported 1,359,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day company-wide in second-quarter results released August 4, 2026, and credited better-than-expected well performance, mainly in the Delaware Basin.

Somebody in each of those offices decides which crews run the program. Know who.

Midland Basin: Counties and Operators

In preliminary Railroad Commission data for July 2026, Martin County led Texas in crude at 19,833,432 barrels and Midland County came second at 18,418,690. Add Upton, Reagan, Andrews, Glasscock, and Howard, and seven of the state's top 10 crude counties that month sit on or along the Midland Basin.

Smaller operators drill here too: Lithos Resources holds about 17,000 net acres in the northern Midland Basin and keeps an office in Midland, per a September 9, 2026 ISN case study. Don't try to be known in every county. Pick the few where your crew already rigs up, and get known by the engineers there.

Midland and Odessa: Where We Have Stood

I've run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with my boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. In both towns, a crew's reputation gets made on location and rides into town by word of mouth. It's a tight, talkative place, where one happy client tells five people.

A messy pad travels too. What you control is whether your good jobs reach past the people standing there, because the engineer who wasn't on that pad either finds the story under your name or hears it secondhand, if at all. Our maps of oil companies in Midland and oilfield companies in Odessa show who is in town to hear it.

Delaware Basin: Reeves, Loving, Eddy, and Lea

On the Texas side, the preliminary July 2026 numbers ranked Loving County fourth in Texas for crude at 8,079,760 barrels, and Reeves County first for condensate.

Across the state line, Matador closed its $1.255 billion purchase of Paloma Permian on October 1, 2026, adding about 16,500 net acres in Eddy and Lea Counties. Devon said in its August 4, 2026 results that it bought 16,300 net acres at the New Mexico federal lease sale, adding about 400 locations, with development planned to start in 2027.

If you sell frac water or recycling, watch the Delaware side. Enverus data cited in WaterBridge's September 2025 prospectus shows about 3.7 barrels of water coming up with every barrel of Delaware oil in 2024. The reuse questions get answered in Frac Water Recycling, and the water business in our Permian produced water guide.

Who Calls the Next Pad: The Completions Engineer and the Company Man

Two people see your crew's work up close. In Oxy's Midland completions engineer posting from June 2026, the engineer acts as the on-site company representative, helps procure materials, equipment, and personnel, and reviews and approves invoices (see Selling to a Completion Engineer). The SLB Energy Glossary calls the company man the operator's representative on location, responsible for safety and efficiency there (see Selling to the Oilfield Company Man).

Neuromarketing was part of my studies, and it taught me that people are bad at telling you what they want. What a man says he wants and what he actually wants can be two different things. We're irrational, and a lot of the time we aren't sure what we want, or can't put it into words when we are. So if you want to understand somebody, watch what he does more than what he says. There's a word for that: ethnography.

Your completions engineer practices ethnography on you whether he'd call it that or not. On a trial pad, he grades your crew on what it does: the rig-up, the time lost, and whether everybody went home safe. So the posts worth making before the next pad show what your crew did, never what it promises.

  • The rig-up. What your crew staged ahead, and why it mattered there.

  • The save. A problem caught early, and the downtime it kept off the job.

  • The miss. A job that went sideways, and what you changed.

  • The question. Something an engineer asked on location, answered for every engineer who didn't.

Before a photo leaves an operator's location, make sure the company man is fine with it. The Warm Walk-In™ turns those jobs into posts in your voice on a fixed calendar, each one approved by you before it goes up, so an engineer can see your crew's work before your name lands on his desk. First meeting still ahead? Start with getting a meeting before the trial pad.

Getting Approved: MSA, ISN Grade, and Supplier Portals

None of this matters until your company is cleared to work for the operator. Apache, Ovintiv, and ConocoPhillips gate suppliers through some mix of ISNetworld grades, OpenInvoice registration, and the GEP purchase-order portal, and How Do I Get on an Operator's Approved Vendor List? walks through each. Lithos set its bar early: it chose ISNetworld as its main contractor platform when it began drilling and had 100 percent of its contractors subscribed three months in. As for the MSA, Foley and Lardner wrote in May 2026 that operators frequently present their standard one as non-negotiable.

A profile has limits. No LinkedIn profile gets a vendor through ISN or past a procurement tender, and on the trial pad, pump time, non-productive time, and safety sell the next pad more directly than any post. Where a known name helps is earlier, when the engineer is deciding who gets a trial.

Why Operators Still Push on Price at High Oil Prices

You'd think high oil would loosen things up. WTI spot averaged $98.70 a barrel while the Dallas Fed collected its third-quarter 2026 survey, September 16 to 24, 2026, and the oilfield services prices-received index still fell to 16.3 from 24.5. One services respondent wrote, "We continue to see pricing pressure from operators."

A quarter earlier, another services firm told the Dallas Fed that pricing "has become much more competitive with the consolidation of the majors." When the big operators absorb their neighbors, there are fewer desks to sell to and more work riding on each one.

I wouldn't fight that on price alone. When the bids look alike, a crew record the engineer has already seen is a tiebreaker you control. More on faster crews and tighter pricing in Frac Sales After Simul-Frac.

How to Stay Known When a Merger Resets the Vendor List

Foley and Lardner wrote in July 2026 that once an operator merger closes, the standard move is to review inherited service agreements, then consolidate, renegotiate, or replace overlapping vendors, because an E&P doesn't need three completions crews. In the Permian, that puts Devon's merger with Coterra, closed May 7, 2026, and Matador's Paloma deal, closed October 1, 2026, on your watch list.

If your customer got bought, that review is about you, and nobody will send you the agenda.

  • Learn the new chart fast. Find out who runs completions on the acreage that changed hands.

  • Introduce your record to strangers. The buyer's engineers never saw your crew work, so show them the pads you ran on the acreage they just bought.

  • Keep the record under your own name. Engineers move after a merger too, and your profile follows you whatever logo is on the truck. More in building a frac sales name that outlasts your logo.

Where to Show Up: HFTC, the Produced Water Society, and the Odessa Oil Show

Events put you in a room with engineers who aren't on a job.

  • HFTC. SPE's events calendar lists its Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition as confirmed for February 2 to 4, 2027, in The Woodlands, Texas.

  • The Produced Water Society. Its 11th Annual Permian Basin Conference runs August 3 to 5, 2027, at the Bush Convention Center in Midland, with recycling and reuse markets on the agenda.

  • The Permian Basin International Oil Show. The next show runs October 19 to 21, 2027, at the Ector County Coliseum in Odessa. Its site lists about 20,000 attendees and more than 650 exhibitors.

Ask the engineers what slowed their last pad, and make the answer your next post.

A Permian Founder in His Industry's Top 1%

The founder we work with is a fourth-generation oilfield man who started a service company in the Permian, and the younger engineers didn't know his company existed. From September 15, 2025 to October 19, 2026, his posts reached 104,386 people, the most common job title among his followers is drilling engineer, and LinkedIn's Social Selling Index ranks him in the top 1% of sales professionals in oil and gas. Read the full story.

Before the Next Pad Gets Awarded

Find out what a completions engineer sees when he looks you up.

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.

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