Live Conference & Online 8 & 9 September 2026
Cutting Cost And Tightening Execution As Bottlenecks Intensify
8 & 9 September 2026
Cutting Cost And Tightening Execution As Bottlenecks Intensify
8 & 9 September 2026
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Strategy Engineering Research Group hosted the latest edition of the Onshore Well Site Facilities Strategy Event on 19–20 August 2025.
Thanks to the Leaders Who Made This Exchange So Valuable
We extend our thanks to the speakers, sponsors, and participants for driving an exchange that cut to the heart of operational and strategic challenges. This became a working arena where priorities were tested, assumptions challenged, and solutions advanced.
Dual Impact: Doing More with Less
The conference was defined by a recurring theme: doing more with less, while designing for dual impact—balancing profitability with emissions control. Sessions addressed the industry’s most urgent intersections—spanning measurement and compliance, asset resilience, digitalisation and AI, workforce capability, standardisation, and facility-level compliance.
A Conference Built for Depth, Not Scale
What made this meeting distinctive was the way scale served focus. With a participant-to-insight ratio rarely achieved at larger trade shows, the room operated less like an auditorium and more like a leadership council. Short presentations, working roundtables, and extended Q&A created candour and practical comparison. Operators spoke openly about applying MVP discipline to strip unnecessary cost, adopting hybrid modularity to accelerate schedules, and introducing nitrogen to reduce emissions.
The format compelled every voice to be heard. Questions came thick and fast, turning exchanges into working relationships. The breadth of perspectives was wide enough to challenge established thinking, yet concentrated enough to maintain depth.
Operators, Regulators, And Innovators Represented Included:
Ryan Prator – Facilities Engineering Manager – Permian, Oxy
Brett Ingram – Senior Onshore Facilities Engineer, Apache
Zach Voithofer – VP of Projects, Elite Optimization
Josh Wenzel – Director, Coiled Line Pipe, FET Global Tubing
Matthew Warren – Petroleum Engineer, Bureau of Land Management
David Benfield – Facilities Engineering Advisor – Texas/New Mexico, Civitas
Molly Determan – President, Energy Workforce & Technology Council
Amy Paddock – Facilities & Midstream Operations Director, Chord Energy
Robert Ward – Strategic Account Director, Sensirion Connected Solutions
Seyed K. Mahjour, Ph.D. – Engineering Specialist IV, Oil & Gas Division, Railroad Commission of Texas
John Westerheide – Chief Revenue Officer, Kathairos
Jason Francis – VP, Project Management, Kathairos
Wes VanNatta – President, XOG Resources
Marco Jarrin – Senior Staff Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer, Murphy Oil Corporation
Ted Wooten – Chief Engineer, Railroad Commission of Texas
Professor Dave Crawley – Professor of Practice, University of Houston
On this site you’ll find the chair’s report alongside the comprehensive post-conference package for purchase and download—distilling practical takeaways into the strategic choices they point towards.
Produced Water: No Silver Bullets
Produced water emerged as a defining theme. Once treated as an adjacent issue, it was placed as one pillar of the facilities agenda—how to measure it credibly, reuse it more effectively, and design facilities with this challenge in mind. Leaders heard directly from the Texas Railroad Commission: neither shallow nor deep injection is sustainable. The systemic risks of both are now unacceptable. Facilities heads and technical leaders must collaborate on alternative solutions, and the time to act is immediate.
Hybrid Modularity: Faster, Smarter, Leaner
Hybrid modularity, when applied carefully, shortens schedules without introducing new bottlenecks. Prefabricated vessels, electric skids, and packaged equipment can deliver time and cost savings, while site-specific work is left to construction teams—avoiding logistical choke points while accelerating delivery.
Bending the Cost Curve Through Equipment Reuse
Equipment reuse is emerging as a viable cost-control lever. When executed with rigorous standards, reuse strategies cut capital expenditure without compromising reliability or safety.
Measure, Manage, Optimize: Data as the Core Discipline
Data-driven optimization is becoming a baseline discipline. Advanced sensors, control loops, and predictive analytics allow inefficiencies to be identified long before they cause breakdowns. As one participant noted: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And if you can’t manage it, you’re just hoping for the best.”
MVP Design: Cutting Cost Without Cutting Value
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) design offers operators the potential to reduce capital costs by as much as 54% while delivering lean, effective infrastructure. The clear call was to move away from bespoke builds and toward scalable, repeatable templates—cutting waste, enhancing reliability, and enabling innovation at speed and cost efficiency.
Measurement as Strategic Advantage
Measurement was reframed not as a compliance burden but as a cost-control and optimisation tool. Facilities that adopt this mindset are moving faster and achieving more. The demand for standardised testing and measurement philosophies is becoming urgent—an issue that will take center stage at the dedicated Measurement & Standardisation Conference in February 2026.
Why Standard Designs Keep Facilities Safe and Scalable
Predictable, standardised designs simplify operations, maintenance, and training. Over-customisation erodes efficiency and safety by preventing workforce knowledge and innovation from scaling. Standardisation, by contrast, provides both safety and scalability.
Data, AI & Governance
AI and advanced analytics are set to redefine predictive maintenance and compressor reliability by 2026. Yet the message from leading operators was clear: governance matters. Cognitive offloading must not slip into blind trust. Data integrity, audit credibility, and human oversight remain inseparable from technical innovation.
What’s Next on the Facilities Agenda
Three initiatives now anchor the forward agenda:
Measurement & Standardisation Conference – February 10–11, 2026
Half-Year Virtual Strategic Update – February 12, 2026, covering post-M&A facilities integration, standardisation updates, and new operator case studies
Main Onshore Facilities Strategy Conference – September 8–9, 2026
The September 2026 event will not just be another conference—it will be the benchmark by which this sector measures its ability to adapt, scale, and succeed.
The conference report package brings together every element of the event: full audio and video recordings, the comprehensive written report, and all presentation slides made available by speakers.
In the spirit of full transparency, please note that while the slides from the opening two sessions are included, the video feed for those sessions was not captured successfully. The audio is clear and complete, and the supporting slides provide the full context.
To reflect this, the package is being offered at a preferential rate.
