The Basin’s Next Generation. Building Legacies. Powering Tomorrow.
That was the theme of the 2025 Permian Basin International Show. Any oil show that can attract some 20,000 attendees, as this one did, deserves to lay claim to such a towering theme. PBIOS was what it always is—a statement of the strength of America’s Oilfield.
WTI was tracking in the high $50s when the three-day show opened on Oct. 21. That pedestrian price didn’t seem to dampen enthusiasm any.
Those of us who have attended the PBIOS event over, say, the last 12 years or more might find ourselves tempted to compare these recent shows with the blockbuster events that came in 2012 and (especially) 2014. I know that I have wondered when we’ll get back to that level of grandeur, just as I wonder when we’ll get back to $100 oil. But as years go by, I recognize, increasingly, just what an anomaly the early 2010s were. Those years of “Permania” were heady times, to be sure. And the explosive growth and the extravagances and the sky’s-the-limit thinking were not a phenomenon of just West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. No, those excesses and that hype were shared by Wall Street and Main Street and whatever street you may have. Just as one leasehold bid topped another and one deal outshone another, so was it true that every sector of the industry, and its financiers, drove and prodded every other sector of the industry until the prices and commitments couldn’t fulfill the surging expectations, and the crash that was 2015 happened not because any sector had any more blame than another, but because the entire system fed upon itself until it became unsustainable.
The point here is that, as said already, the early 2010s were an anomaly—they were not grounded in reality. And for that reason, we are not likely to see them again. That’s not a bad mark on the industry. It’s just saying there was a blip that won’t be repeated. And maybe that is a good thing.
But I’ve wandered away from reportage on the 2025 PBIOS. Here is what some attendees told me during the event.
An employee with Albuquerque-based Curie Environmental Services, whose last name I did not catch (first name Dieter), said he was at the show for what is his first time. He was enthused.
“We actually only found out about this show a month ago,” he said. “My company is trying to break into the oilfield market and provide disposal services for naturally occurring radioactive material. We came here just to check everything out and it’s been a lot of fun. It is so much bigger than what I expected. I saw online that the show has 20,000 attendees and 1,100 booths, and [yet] I am still blown away by what those numbers actually look like in real life.”
John Curtis, of AVI Rocky Mountain (based in Seminole, Texas), was greeting the public at his company’s outdoor exhibit. “It’s been a good show,” he said. “I’ve gotten to visit with a lot of other vendors and that’s what a lot of a show like this is—it is networking with other vendors. Maybe you don’t have a lot of end-users [of your products] coming by, although we do have a few end-users, but you get other people you can network with, which also helps you in your business.”
Jarod Carmichael, with VanZandt Controls, LLC, told us that the show offers his company a great opportunity to meet new customers and vendors. “It definitely exposes us to some [new] people,” he said. “There’s a ton of people in the industry, so there are always a lot of companies out there that we haven’t dealt with as either a vendor or a customer.”
Austin Duncan, Partnerships Manager with Intellishift, also said he thought the show had gone well. “We’ve met some really nice and intuitive, innovative thinkers here in the oil space, and it’s definitely worth coming back to in the next few years.”
Duncan said that Intellishift’s focus is to keep vehicles and people safe through its AI dash cameras and its telematics program. “We’re a satellite-based tracking solution that gives you insights into the most important data on your fleet and operations,” he said.
In the oil industry, many workers are out in the field. “You don’t get a lot of cell phone service [in parts of the Basin] and it’s hard to know where people are, or what are they doing,” Duncan said. “We’re a really great fit for that. We help give more visibility into your daily operations and into controlling costs and boosting efficiency.”
Raul Palomino of Airgas of Odessa (part of Airgas USA) greeted me when I visited their outdoor exhibit, one that featured a rolling classroom.
“We’ve partnered here with 3M,” Palomino said. “3M being a really big safety distributor vendor. We’re trying to show that Airgas has a lot more to offer than just welding supplies and gases. So, 3M bought their ‘roadshow trailer’—that’s what they call it. This 18-wheeler trailer [when parked and set up] expands out about an additional eight feet on both sides. Inside, you have a classroom that typically holds anywhere from 20 to 40 people. They can take it out on sites to your bigger companies and have on-the-site safety trainings.”
Curie Environmental Services, AVI Rocky Mountain,VanZandt Controls, Intellishift, and Airgas—these were all representative of the more than 1,000 exhibitors who fill the buildings and grounds of this massive show.
We at PB Oil and Gas Magazine are grateful for the opportunities we had to visit with so many of you at the event. When we weren’t busy manning our booth in Building G—our customary abode there—we were out and about, seeing the exhibits and chatting with as many of you as we could.
By Jesse Mullins
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