The 2019 PBWIEC Event Chair, Jonna Smoot, VP, Marketing at West Texas National Bank, and an inaugural Advisory Board Member stated that, “a large part of what PBWIEC does is look at, review, discuss and seek to address the challenges and opportunities of today’s water in energy issues while looking towards our future.”
“To that end, we have local policy and decision makers speak, a legal and regulatory session that compares and contrasts the Texas vs. New Mexico way of regulating, including defining and resolving water issues in the two states that make up the Permian. PBWIEC strives to be a non-commercial conference in that it offers information and education to conference attendees vs. the standard water conference sales pitch performed at most every other water conference across the states. PBWIEC keeps our Conference registration pricing at one of the absolute lowest in the industry to encourage local municipalities, small companies and others to be able to attend, connect and learn from our Conference. These tenets are just some of what allowed PBWIEC to sell out at 426 Conference attendees last year (Year One!) when we had hoped to have maybe 150 attendees as our best-case scenario. We sold out of every sponsorship and this year opened new categories to accommodate last year’s requests for more opportunities. This year we are anticipating 600+ attendees and can handle as much Conference-related capacity as comes our way (we essentially built our own ‘bigger pipeline’!),” Smoot exclaimed.
The Conference was spearheaded by Jim Woodcock, UTPBs College of Business Advisory Board Chair, founding PBWIEC board member and PBWIEC’s Chairman. Mid-2017, Woodcock galvanized a team of volunteers and working with business, civic and regulatory leaders as well as other Permian Basin stake holder and began developing the idea of PBWIEC’s new-in-concept conference that focuses on information, issues, opportunities and solutions with respect to water in energy. Many of those same volunteers are again assisting with the 2019 Conference.
“Each horizontal well that is drilled uses anywhere from 100,000 up to a million barrels of water and because the Permian Basin is in the middle of a desert we have to be extra mindful of water. No one wants any drilling activity to stop because of water concerns or availability, but we’ve got to recognize our usage and try to identify ways to best manage that. And that concern was really the nucleus, the reason why we pulled this water conference together,” Woodcock stated. “This nonprofit (status pending) Conference has not only begun addressing world-class-best-practices at its annual event it also brings together business leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders to more collectively discuss this very important topic of water in energy in depth. In its first year, PBWIEC was able to provide $10,000 in scholarships to UTPB from its net profits and expects to be able to provide more in scholarships to UTPB from this year’s Conference net proceeds. PBWIEC is very proud of the fact that our Year One 2018 Conference was able to achieve a net profit and give back to our community with only one paid, part-time employee,” Woodcock shared.
Confirmed 2019 PBWIEC Keynote and Featured Speakers include:
Day One Lunch Keynote Speaker: Mine K. Yücel, Sr. Vice President, Senior Research Analyst, Dallas Federal Reserve – Topic: To be announced
Day One Dinner Keynote Speaker: Dr. Scott Tinker — Topic: The Global Picture and Tying Things all Together
Day Two Lunch Keynote Speaker: Ben Shepperd – Topic: Legislative and Permian Basin Overview
Day Three Keynote Speaker: Steve Melzer – Topic: New Insights on Transmissive Fractures and Water Production from the Horizontal Well Revolution
Featured Talks include those from The Baker Institute for Public Policy’s Center for Energy Studies and McKinsey & Company
In all, there will be over 40 speakers and panelists over the two and a half days of Conference-related events at the Midland Horseshoe Arena.
Poster Presentations will be held Day One and Day Two in the Education Building of the Horseshoe Arena during the Conference and will include discussions from the UT Permian Basin College of Engineering and UT Austin’s TexNet Center for Integrated Seismicity Research, Bureau of Economic Geology on:
Water Energy Nexus Research Institute
Predicting Fracture Spacing, Clusters, Cluster Spacing and Perforations of Horizontal Wells Using Data Analytics
Substitutional effects of bivalent Zn and Ni cations on spin thermoelectric properties of Co3O4
Electron-Phonon interactions in normal and inverse Nickel substituted Cobalt spinel oxides
Activated Carbon Nanopowder Solar-Enabled Purification of Produced Water
Review of Produced Water Treatment Technologies in the Permian Basin
Utility of Flared Gas to Generate Power and Treat Produced Water
Saltwater Disposal Practices in the Permian Basin, with Application to Disposal Resource and Induced Seismicity Assessments
Event Chair Smoot asserted that, “PBWIEC organizers expect the Conference to be as successful, or more so than last year. We’re reaching a global audience with our attendees. We’ve had civil water engineers from Minnesota signing up to attend with very little advertising. We’ve kept a laser-like focus on retaining our original tenet of not being a commercially-oriented conference. We ask our speakers to discuss their opportunities and issues in the context of water in energy and how they’re managing those. A unique aspect for this year’s Conference is that we have landowners speaking during the Conference. We invite a diverse group to speak, and invite Press far and wide to attend and report on what they see, hear and experience at our event.”
Conference registrants include participants from: Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, and even as far as Canada. And last but not least, the Great State of Texas is well-represented with Conference participants.
Sponsors, as of this release, include (in alpha order): Apache; Basic Energy Services; Big D Companies; The Bosworth Company; Cadence Bank; Coleman Filter Company; Concho; Fountain Quail Energy Services; Frost Bank; Goodnight Midstream; Gradiant Energy Services; Gravity Oilfield Services; Guitar Water Services; Hydrozonix; Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP; Latigo Petroleum, Inc.; Layne Water Midstream; Mabee Ranch; Nicholas Consulting Group; Odessa Convention and Visitors Bureau; Parsley Energy; R Construction Oilfield Services; Schlumberger; Sourcewater; Terra Oilfield Services, LLC; Tetra Tech; Veolia Water Technologies; Victaulic Company; VisitMidland.com; West Texas National Bank, West Texas Radio Group.
Additional Conference-related information, media inquiries, registration and sponsorship information may be found at PBWIEC.com.
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