Things are gearing up for the Permian Basin Water in Energy Conference in March and one of the main headlines is that ExxonMobil has stepped up to be the title sponsor.
Set for March 5-7 at the Bush Convention Center, 105 E. Main St., in Midland, it is having early bird registration now and registration is live on the conference website, waterinenergy.com, said Shepperd Leadership Institute Director of Special Events Savannah Woodward. Early bird sign up offers discounted prices.
Richard Brantley, senior vice president of operations at University Lands and the 2024 PBWIEC Board Chair, said their XTO brand was the sponsor last year. But in the last run-up to the conference, they really “stepped forward with some speakers and engaged.”
“I really appreciated that continuing this year. They’ve now wanted to brand the conference with their name and leadership. It speaks volumes for the value of the conference and the benefit to the industry, and more specifically to UTPB,” Brantley said.
The PBWIEC is a program of the University of Texas Permian Basin and housed at the John Ben Shepperd Leadership Institute, allowing students at UT Permian Basin to directly benefit from the conference proceeds. The conference started privately with Jim Woodcock. Brantley said he “philanthropically donated the conference to UTPB.”
The welcome reception is March 5 at the UTPB Engineering Building. The first full conference day is March 6.
“We’re still finalizing and confirming our speakers and really putting together our agenda,” Woodward said in a Jan. 4 interview.
The keynote dinner March 6 will be at the Midland Country Club, the website said. The speaker will be John Moon, managing director and head of Morgan Stanley Energy Partners.
Among the conference topics will be seismicity, an update from the New Mexico Legislature, hopefully a panel on treated produced water for large-scale agriculture use, critical minerals that could be extracted from produced water, a review of a lawsuit concerning the ownership of produced water by an appellate attorney, organized by local attorney Max Wright, and representatives from the Texas and New Mexico Produced Water Resource consortia, and more.
Brantley said they expect 400 to 500 people to attend. Something new this year is tabletop exhibits from service companies.
He hopes students will be among those on hand as they are being encouraged to go.
“Many of the students, as I’m told, probably 2/3 are what we would consider non-traditional students,” who went into the workforce after high school and now want to get some upward mobility, Brantley said.
“It’s a good experience for them either way to just sit and listen, or meet some people,” he added.
Historically, the conference has been held at the Midland County Horseshoe Arena, but Woodward said they are pivoting to the Bush Convention Center.
“We’re really excited about the new venue change,” Woodward said.
For each conference, the board begins meeting around August or September and the conference is either in late February or early March, depending on when they confirm dates.
“We have a follow up meeting, whichever month lands after the conference. This year, the board will have a final meeting in April to follow up and debrief the actual event. Then we’ll kind of take a break for the summer, but it’s an ongoing project. It sneaks up on you and time goes fast, so constantly researching and keeping up with topics that are coming out, new legislation and things that are coming forth and different cases and bills and making sure you’re staying on top of it, as well as you know what’s going on with the community involved in water management,” Woodward said.
She added that she is looking forward to the event.
“It is right around the corner. I feel like I’m going to blink and then it’s going to be here, but back in September when I started working on it I felt like it was so far away. There was so much that needed to be done to get ready for this conference. It was almost overwhelming because it was like, how am I ever going to get acclimated and get this conference planned and then pull it off. So now that I’ve made these relationships and we’ve really come together as a board and have started to confirm things and pull together, I’m really starting to see everything unfold and come together. I’m very excited for it. I think that it’s going to be a fabulous event this year. I’m really excited to see everyone’s feedback (from) it,” Woodward said.
