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Jan. 23—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.
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"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.