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.

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. That's just the reality of doing business in the Permian. The engineers and buyers you come to Midland to see live in that reality every day, and the ones who already know your name are the ones who call you back.

Midland is operator country. The City of Midland lists Chevron and Diamondback Energy among its major employers and says ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, EOG Resources, and Oxy have headquarters or regional campuses in town.

Operators With a Midland Office, Sourced and Dated

This list is short on purpose. A business directory or the map pack will show more Midland companies than this page, because we list only the operators we can source and date, and we recheck them every quarter.

  • Chevron. A major employer, per the City of Midland's fast facts (updated May 6, 2026).

  • Diamondback Energy. Headquartered in Midland. It averaged 1,018 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second quarter of 2026, including 525 thousand barrels of oil a day, per its August 3, 2026 SEC filing.

  • ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, EOG Resources, and Oxy. Each has a headquarters or regional campus in Midland, per the same city page.

  • Permian Resources. Posted Midland-based engineer jobs in June and September 2026, listed in the next section.

  • Lithos Resources. About 17,000 net acres in the northern Midland Basin and an office in Midland, per an ISN case study dated September 9, 2026.

For scale, Enverus ranked Diamondback, the hometown name on that list, third among Permian operators with 15.8 rigs as of April 10, 2026, behind ExxonMobil and Occidental. The full ranking is on the Permian Basin hub.

Buyer Titles in Midland Job Postings

Job postings are the cleanest public read on who buys what, because they spell out what the engineer runs and signs.

  • Completions engineer, Oxy. Oxy's Midland completions engineer posting from June 2026 puts the engineer on site as the company representative, helping procure materials and approving invoices. More in selling to a completion engineer.

  • Senior drilling engineer, EOG Resources. EOG's Midland posting, up since October 29, 2025 and still listed October 18, 2026, has the engineer writing AFEs and evaluating vendor performance. More in what a drilling engineer does.

  • Production engineer, Permian Resources. Its June 24, 2026 posting, for a Midland-based engineer on the Texas Delaware side, covers gas lift, ESP, rod pump, jet pump, and plunger lift design, workover AFEs, and working with the wellsite supervisor and service providers. More in selling to a production engineer.

  • Water resources engineer, Permian Resources. Its September 4, 2026 posting reconciles run tickets and meter data against water purchase statements, works with third-party vendors and regulators, and forecasts water needs and flowback volumes. More in selling to oil and gas water management.

The engineer who approves your invoice and the one who grades your performance should know your name before the first ticket. A Permian founder we work with told us younger engineers in the Permian are scared to rock the boat or stick their neck out. A vendor they have never heard of is a risk they can skip.

Where Midland Sellers Meet: Next Dates

Midland business still has a wheeling-and-dealing culture. It's still the Wild West, and work moves on relationships here, so I'd put these rooms on your calendar before I'd put a dollar into ads. A handshake still counts in Midland. It counts for more when the man shaking your hand has already read what you know, so the lunch starts on business instead of introductions.

  • First Monday of the Month Artificial Lift Club. Meets the first Monday of each month at the Petroleum Club of Midland to talk artificial lift problems and solutions. Lunch is $15, cash at the door. Its sponsor calendar pairs a company and a speaker with each meeting: Lufkin Industries on November 2, 2026, and Liftrock Integrated Lift Services on December 7, 2026.

  • Permian Basin Petroleum Association. Has served West Texas and southeastern New Mexico since 1961, with offices in Midland, Austin, and Santa Fe. Its next listed event is the Top Hand Award Banquet on January 21, 2027.

  • Produced Water Society, 11th Annual Permian Basin Conference. August 3 to 5, 2027, at the Bush Convention Center in Midland, covering disposal capacity, recycling and reuse markets, seismicity, regulatory change, treatment technology, and basin infrastructure investment.

Fifteen dollars and a Monday lunch hour buys a seat in a room built around lift problems. That hour goes further when people in the room already know your name. For the bigger shows, see which oil and gas trade shows are worth going to.

The Gates Permian Operators Run

Before a buyer can use you, you clear the paperwork. Lithos Resources, one of the Midland-office operators above, made ISNetworld its primary contractor platform as it began drilling and reached 100 percent contractor subscription compliance three months in. Apache, Ovintiv, and ConocoPhillips publish their own gates, from ISN grades to OpenInvoice to GEP purchase orders, and we lay them out step by step in how to get on an operator's approved vendor list. If your grades and registrations are not current, fix that before you spend a dollar on visibility.

Midland County and Its Neighbors: Top Crude Counties

Martin County was Texas's top crude oil county in July 2026 at 19,833,432 barrels, and Midland County was second at 18,418,690, per preliminary Railroad Commission data. Upton (3rd), Reagan (5th), Andrews (7th), Glasscock (9th), and Howard (10th) also made the state's top 10, so seven of the top 10 sit on or along the Midland Basin.

District lines matter when you read the numbers. District 8 covers 20 counties, including Andrews, Crane, Ector, Glasscock, Howard, Martin, Midland, Mitchell, and Sterling. Upton and Reagan, two of the top five, fall under District 7C out of San Angelo, and Dawson, Borden, and Gaines fall under District 8A, so a District 8 permit count leaves them out.

The RRC District 8 Office and District 8 Permits

The Railroad Commission's District 8 office is at 10 Desta Dr, Suite 500 E, Midland (432-684-5581).

In September 2026 the RRC issued 323 permits to drill new oil or gas holes in District 8, the most of any district, out of 759 statewide. District 8 had 283 in September 2025, so that is up about 14 percent on the year. A permit comes before the rig, which is why it is worth a look before you plan next quarter's calls.

Midland in Numbers: Jobs and the Oil Patch

The BLS counted 129,800 nonfarm jobs in the Midland metro in August 2026, with 44,600 of them in mining, logging, and construction, a bucket that holds more than oil and gas but still comes to about a third of the town's jobs. Unemployment was 3.3 percent.

The Dallas Fed's second-quarter 2026 report says Midland-Odessa jobs grew 3 percent from March through June, faster than Texas at 2.4 percent and the U.S. at 0.8 percent. Midland's unemployment rate edged up to 3.4 percent in June from 3.1 percent in March.

Visiting From Houston: What a Midland Trip Costs

Federal per diem for October 2026 through September 2027 allows $136 a night for lodging and $74 a day for meals in Midland, before airfare, so call it about $210 a day on the ground. The sand in the sheets comes free. The flight and the hotel cost the same either way. What changes is whether the meeting starts cold.

Field Guides for Selling Into Midland

For the service, supply, and equipment companies down the road, see the Odessa map. Mapping Midland for a whole crew instead of one territory? Start with the page for sales managers and directors.

Top 1% for a Man Allergic to Fake Branding

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.

Top 1%, for a man who puts on a suit for the podium when the job calls for it, spends the rest of his time in the field, and can't stand fake branding. He got there sounding like himself, not like a marketer, and that is the only kind of LinkedIn worth doing for a Midland rep who would rather be on location than online.

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

Get Your Bison Walk-Around

Before your next Midland meeting, find out what the 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.

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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.