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Why Your Field Team and Vendor Relationships Could Make or Break Production

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The production world presents unique challenges with six-month delayed feedback loops between decisions and results, requiring careful metric tracking and strong communication between office, field operations, and service providers.

• Weekly alignment and communication is critical between office, field, and service people
• Vendor relationships require understanding both wellhead operations and business context
• Leadership makes the difference in production performance through clear communication
• Talent pipeline faces challenges with mentorship gaps becoming increasingly problematic
• Operator-vendor relationships are evolving from low-cost bids toward trust and collaboration
• Communication remains the through-line connecting successful operations across all basins

Join us at connectioncrew.com to participate in our upcoming Crew Club events, with new sessions starting August 21st in Midland.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to Energy Crew Podcast. I'm your host, jp Warren. Today we're going to be going over a Crew Club Operator Roundtable, kind of giving a recap on what we discussed and what we went over in our Midland event on May 6th with Levi Harris, Production Manager of Permian Resources. We had a great conversation. I want to thank the sponsors for being at the table WellDrive, lfs Chemistry, mojo, ai, r360, environmental Service and WorkRise. We had a packed table with Levi leading discussion, and the basis of his discussion let me kind of give a little bit of context is that he kicked it off with saying pretty much that you know in drilling, in completions, whenever people make decisions, you can see the result pretty immediately. You make a decision here. You see it pretty much whenever, I guess, that action's taking place. However, in the production world, you make a decision today, it might take six months or a year before you even see the results of the decisions you made. So Levi came in and said hey, listen, how do you actually track? You know metrics. How do you actually track? How do you was it per unit metrics and tracking a kind of a what, what, what data points we need to focus on to see whatever decisions we're making today and what it's impacting six months from now, and you can think about the challenges just associated with this. It's a. It's first off how was the decision made six months ago? What conversations went in? What data was available six months ago, because we live in a world of so much data right now. What new data has come in in that six months after the decision was made? So it was a real cool eye-opening experience for me just seeing the challenges and also the respect that's out there for production engineers out there. It's kind of a. I think it'd be an interesting place to be because, again, whenever you see you want immediate gratification or immediate observations of decisions you make. However, it's so interesting to think that a decision made today, you look back, you know, look forward in the future six months, then you decide.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to go over kind of four key high level takeaways from that discussion. What Levi shared with the table. We had a great, great group around. Let me see, we had people from Chevron, permian Resources, sm Energy, diamondback Energy, eog, oxy and Civitas and it was just a good all around discussion, a very open, candid discussion between operators and service companies on what they're actually tracking and why they're actually tracking it. So we're going to kind of go over the top four key takeaways from that discussion and then dive into probably about three other takeaways that kind of take other topics that we've had around our operator roundtables and kind of give, I guess, a better overview and tie that into this conversation, because at the table we have a subject that we dive into. However, we often go on tangents. The cool part is whenever we go on those tangents it always completes previous discussions or just adds more layers to previous discussions. So it's a really cool position to be in to kind of get a holistic view. I mean, everyone at the table kind of has this holistic view of the industry through conversation. So again I want to thank everyone for being at the table. Again, this is a little recap and I'm going to read through my notes here. So the four key takeaways from that table the round table that we had in Midland was number one.

Speaker 1:

The weekly alignment is critical, all right. So Levi stressed that, listen, their communication has to happen between the office, the field and pretty much the service people on site. Constant communication is critical as we move forward between vendors, field operations or whatever. It's not just about setting goals anymore. It's about recalibrating regularly to stay aligned and fast conditions. At this point in the game, the industry is moving so fast. Yet when you need to make a decision or pretty much communicate, empower your field team to make better decisions based on the directors of the company. It's an all buy-in situation. People buy into that. Kate Hyken led one about human engineering and she echoed the same thing. So the office, the corporate office, needs to communicate to the field a lot more to better understand the whys why is this company doing this? What decisions need to be made? That aligns with the company directive. So, again, better communication, that's open communication, back and forth, all right.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that he brought up is that vendor fit requires more than technical capabilities All right. So vendors are expected to understand both the wellhead and the business context. And again, this is all about understanding the why of your customer, and that's having these candid, open conversations. So truly just understand, like, why a company is making a decision or what direction they're going and the why behind that. That's much more important than just kind of putting service out there or trying to just sell service. All right.

Speaker 1:

Those who take time to align with the operator's broader strategy are becoming trusted partners, not vendors. And again, I think this industry has gone through different phases of vendor operator relationships, whether it's you know, we all feel like we're in the price war right now. However, through recent accrued club conversations, you know, you're learning that. You know we had one where one statistic was thrown out there were 40 of operators making decisions based off the low cost and from those decisions, 70 of those operators are having to pay kind of out of pocket to deal with those uh, low cost decisions. So the whole low cost uh debate or mindset is kind of taking a step back and now operators more looking towards trust, partnership, collaborative solutions and approaches and also, and what that means. That means the vendor needs to understand the operator's why, and that is again through communication, through having conversations.

Speaker 1:

All right, leadership is the differentiator in production. Performance comes down to how engaged, aligned and empowered your team is. Again, this goes back to what we talked about two points before. Aligned and empowered your team is Again, this goes back to what we talked about two points before. It's communication between the team from the office to the field. Get the vendors involved. It's all understanding what's going on. We're no longer order takers, because those are just the vendors. We really need to be service companies, to be part of the conversations on what the company is doing and why it's doing it. All right. Leadership that communicates expectations clearly and often makes a difference in hitting product and targets. Again, this is what I preach, not just at a crew club tables, about the power of having conversations and the power of kind of having these human face-to-face interactions. But there's so much knowledge to be shared and there's so much alignment to be had, and that is having through conversation. So, again, leadership communicating to the teams is empowering the teams.

Speaker 1:

All right, so now pulling back, kind of taking a step back from just this topic that was discussed, was also kind of and obviously you can find more of this information in the newsletter and all that stuff or join the tables. But the three broader takeaways that kind of tie into previous conversations we had. The number one, communication, is the through line. All right. From Fort Worth to Houston, all the way to Midland, operators continue to stress the clarity, not complexity. All right. Whether it's SIMOPs, extended laterals, ai rollouts, vendor collaboration, whatever it is, none of it works without shared understanding at every level.

Speaker 1:

So I thought one interesting takeaway. We had a crew club table about, you know, operator alignment with service companies and transparency and all that, and it was very interesting to see and this kind of was eyeopening for me. You know, I often assumed that you know most operators would have the same direction or why. You know what, what's the reasoning why they perform stuff, it's cost, it's efficiencies, it's this, it's that. However, it's so fascinating here just the different operators at the table of different companies at the table, and why they're making decisions, why they choose vendors, um, based on whether it's again, whether it's based on price, whether it's on relationship with quality, whether it's based on uh, whatever it's quality, whether it's based on whatever the production goals, whatever it is. It's that through having these conversations, it's very interesting to hear the different whys of each company, and that was kind of insightful to me because, if I'm thinking this, okay, this definitely helps with strategy when approaching your target audience. All right, another thing that I guess that bled into this conversation is the talent pipeline is cracking. Another thing that I guess that bled into this conversation is the talent pipeline is cracking.

Speaker 1:

We discussed as OKC Midland and in Denver that that the attendees, we spoke candidly about the challenges of developing a mid-level talent. There seems to be a gap with the mentorships going on in this industry. And I'm not talking about the structured mentorship programs where you get assigned someone, you check a box, you have your weekly meeting, that's all good, don't get me wrong. I think that's extremely valuable, but it's going down the hall and introducing yourself to maybe the early career person, the early career professional, and just introducing yourself and just talking to them. So mentorship is a key proponent of our industry.

Speaker 1:

However, it seems to be kind of going away or taking the back burner. So that is not keeping talent in this market, that's not training talent up. I think a lot of people right now are just relying on AI to be the knowledge source, to be the knowledge bank where, hey, listen, if I, you know, if you know, john Smith decides to retire tomorrow after 40 years, that's okay, I'll just go to this AI data or this AI model and get you know the decisions from that and get their information from that. However, there's a lot being lost in these, in this lack of mentorship relationship. So, again, mentorship is one of those things taking the backseat. However, it is so crucial to our industry to continue. So, again, if you want to continue to maintain and get talent to the level that they can actually perform at, that's mentorship. So go down the hallway, say hello, introduce yourself to someone Honestly. It doesn't even have to be at your company, all right. So if you are an original mentor, you can reach out to someone. Maybe you see a LinkedIn, you see them, you know a young person kind of getting after it, hustling, asking questions. Engage with them. So start reaching out. Vendor engagement is evolving.

Speaker 1:

We just touched on this Across all basins and across pretty much every single crew club event we've had recently. Is that the idea of low cost? We had one person in Midland mentioned listen, you can give away free directional drilling services, but I'm not going to take it. I need to be working with the team. I need to understand the team. I didn't know the team. I need to have a relationship with the team.

Speaker 1:

So it's not just strictly low cost anymore. I know a lot of people don't believe that and for me, for those out there that don't believe that, that just means you don't have the rapport or relationship with your operator yet, with your customer yet, all right. So you're seeing a shift towards cost-based decisions to more of a collaborative approach. Again, shared KPIs, get everyone at the table, have everyone discuss kind of what's going on, clear communication and outcome-based relationships. Low-cost bids are losing the high fit solutions and again, that's just not a strategy. So if you want to avoid the low cost excuse, the low cost obstacle, that's again getting to know your customer more, that's understanding the challenges and the problems that they have and that's asking the right questions. Again, that's not just submitting the lowest cost and hopefully get the work and you don't even understand the person's problem. So again, yeah, so this was kind of the top.

Speaker 1:

This was kind of the top takeaways that we had from our Midland Crew Club events and again I want to thank everyone for being there. We have another exciting season coming up with 10 events on the schedule. We actually only have six events on the schedule, but we're going to be having 10 events on the schedule and on average our season is bringing over 130 E&P operators 60% are manors above and drilling completion production. So we're about to have another high level round of conversations kicking off on August 21st in Midland. So I'm excited about that. If you're looking to join the table, head over to connectioncrewcom. That's C-R-U-Ecom, spelled like Motley Crue, not J-Crew. So I want to thank everyone for tuning in to Energy Crew. Again, if you're looking for more information, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. Subscribe to connection crewcom to stay up to date with everything that's going on at our crew club round table. So thank you all for tuning in and we'll talk to you all soon, thank you.