REMEMBER: THE BARREL IS ALWAYS HALF FULL
Recently, I found myself alone in Midland, Texas, reading this message on an electronic billboard. It wasn't just any billboard – it's a fixture of the city’s downtown, a kind of thermometer for Midland. If you stand around for a few minutes, the board will cycle through a variety of graphics, puns, quotes, and, notably, the daily prices of oil and gas, giving you a sense of how things are going in the Permian Basin.
It’s programmed by David Arrington – president of Arrington Oil & Gas Operating and a veteran of the energy industry. The screen flashed again:
WORKING IN OIL…WHAT A GAS
I’ve lived in West Texas for some time now, but I’m not very familiar with Midland. As I write this, I'm aware that some of you might be reading this from Midland. Some of you might be reading this from Canada. Regardless of where you are, I’m taking you on my journey as a Midland beginner – a visitor to a place I find endlessly interesting, and a place we have not yet covered in these dispatches.
The billboard flashed to a green screen reading “OIL $81.48,” – that’s $81.48 per barrel. The next day, the board read $82.09. These are boom prices, and Midland is the center of the action. Historic deals are being made; like Hollywood studios, oil companies are consolidating, collecting wells and wealth under gargantuan company umbrellas. Endeavor Energy Resources, which was privately owned by Autry Stephens since he founded the company 45 years ago with just one well, was recently acquired by Diamondback Energy for $26 billion. The deal has made Stephens, as of today, the 85th richest person in the world.
After visiting Midland in the early aughts, the writer Susan Orlean quipped that “being inconspicuous is Midland's most conspicuous feature.” That's the same feeling I had walking around the city last week. Due to the industry it houses, one might think Midland would be ostentatious, but it’s just the opposite – it feels restrained. In these unbearably hot summer months, the city felt more like a ghost town than a boomtown.
On my second day in Midland, I woke up and got ready for lunch at the Petroleum Club, which was founded in 1947. It's a Midland institution; a Texas Monthly article succinctly characterizes it as “a place for a guy to get a decent lunch and a billion-dollar deal.”
“What should I wear?” I asked Christian Patry of Patch Energy, my Midland guide for the day.
“Well,” said Christian, “I’m wearing khakis and a golf shirt, so whatever the female equivalent of that is.” I did not have the female equivalent of that. While Midlanders totally understand what to wear in Marfa, I, a Marfan with no dry cleaner for miles around, did not know how to dress for Midland. Luckily, I’d anticipated the moment, and came somewhat prepared with some gray slacks and a turtleneck – a wintery look in the dead of summer.
Christian picked me up and we drove to the Petroleum Club, a monolithic building in the middle of downtown. Texas Monthly quotes one of the founders of the club, Robert L. Wood, as saying, “We didn’t want anything fancy. We just wanted a good, plain, basic business club.” True to the vision, it looks sturdy and immovable, almost minimalist.
Christian took me through what he called “The Goodfellas entrance,” a door through the back of the building and into a kitchen space adorned with gold-framed portraits of club members over the years. Alongside a group of other guests in khakis and khaki equivalents, we strode through the swinging doors and into the lobby.
Christian walked me over to a large round table near the front door, where once upon a time, you'd walk in and see a circle of brim-up cowboy hats, fresh off of the heads of the most important men in Midland.
“That’s how you’d know who was here,” said Christian.
We made our way up the grand staircase to the buffet in a cool, wood-paneled room with large windows looking out over the city. Tall glasses of iced tea sat sweating on pristine, empty tables.
Summer in Midland isn’t a hopping time, as evidenced by the dining room’s attendance. Christian explained that many Midlanders leave the city for the season; we were two of seven diners in the room.
Over lunch, we talked about Midland’s boom and bust cycles. Christian confirmed the industry was indeed booming, but said that it doesn’t mean people aren’t thinking about the next bust, and what it might mean to find the industry in a pit like it was during the pandemic.
“It’s not how deep the hole is, it’s how wide,” said Christian – as in, how long the bust lasts, and how long people can hold their breath until the next upswing.
We finished lunch and Christian gave me a driving tour. He pointed out myriad abandoned buildings downtown – gorgeous deco office creations that had shuttered and fallen into disrepair.
While many of those buildings remain empty, the energy company Concho Resources recently completed a gigantic new office space from the ground-up. The design – a sleek building with a café and a fitness center – would be just as at home in Silicon Valley as it is in Midland. With all of its bells and whistles, the office seems to beckon to a younger crowd.
And while the Petroleum Club was on the emptier side, Ally Outdoors, a firearms store boasting the largest indoor gun range in the state, was bustling. The young entrepreneur James Gripp opened the space seven years ago, and it looks like a cross between a very fancy version of an REI and a Tesla dealership.
The next day, I walked around downtown alone, where the Midland Map Company caught my eye. The name is written in 1950s neon – the original sign from when the company was established.
However, when I stepped inside the lobby, I was greeted by a neat row of computers and a large sign reading ENVERUS – the name of the tech company that bought the map store about five years ago. Enverus uses data, some sourced from Midland Maps, to help energy companies forecast investments, drill sites, and more.
The office administrator, Katie, kindly took me back to the vault (a literal vault, the building used to be a bank) where they keep all of the maps. The company has maps from every Texas county dating back to the 1950s – most of them hand-drawn and printed on photo paper. I could still smell the ammonia.
Midland Map Company seems to straddle a fine line between the old and new: an industry moving into a more tech-forward future inside of a city that feels like a time capsule. This crossroads feels a bit poetic, too: Midland’s namesake is its middleground location, its position halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso. Now, it’s in the middle of a sea-change.
Despite the growth, Katie told me that Midland feels like a small town. There are very few degrees of separation between locals.
“You’re either from Midland and you stay here, or move to the city for work. There’s no in-between,” she said. “No one casually moves to Midland.”
On my last night, I headed to a bar called The Bar in downtown Midland. I sat in between groups of men talking about mineral rights and potential drill sites – a Permian din. I opened my notebook and started writing this dispatch.
Spending three days in Midland made me wonder what else I’d been missing about the city. What’s David Arrington’s inspiration for the billboard? What’s it like to be an oilfield wife? What’s it like to be from Midland and see how the rest of the state benefits from the city's mineral rights? How many people have private planes? And where do they go?
In the spirit of the questions we asked when we made Marfa for Beginners, I started to think about the questions I’d ask for a Midland for Beginners series, and how to go about answering them.
Caló
Cuerda – In modern Spanish, it means chord, string or line. In Caló, it means a person who’s serious, morally upright, self-assured or uncompromising. A cuerda is the opposite of a relaje, a goof-off or an unserious person
Caló is a borderland dialect. You can find more episodes here.
Other recent programming:
The Interior Department has formally established the Blackwell School National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas as the nation’s newest national park unit. Travis Bubenik has that story here.
Midland officials are rushing to figure out the best course of action to make up a multimillion dollar shortfall in the city’s firefighter pension fund. Over the last year, city leaders and local firefighters have worked to figure out the best way to make up the deficit, which is near $109 million, according to an official on the board overseeing the pension fund. Mitch Borden has that story here.
The Environmental Protection Agency is set to review Texas’ latest plan for cleaning up air quality in Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains national parks within the next year as part of a settlement finalized last week in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups. Travis Bubenik has more on that here.
High Five
This week's playlist comes to us from Dave Harding of Funky Beats, which you can listen to at 8 p.m. every Tuesday. This week, he's gifted us a mini playlist: Summer in the (Tall) City.
- Summer in The City - Quincy Jones
- At the Hotel - Eunice Collins
- People Make the World Go Round - The Stylistics
- How Long Do I Have to Wait For You? - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
- Do It Again - Deep Heat
Listen to Dave's playlist here, and find archived episodes of Funky Beats and all of our music shows on Mixcloud.
PSAs
The Nature Conservancy’s West Texas Program will be hosting guided tours of the Marathon Grasslands Preserve this weekend - Friday, July 19 through Sunday, July 21.
The tours, exploring the Chihuahuan Desert Grasslands, start at 9 a.m. and end at noon. Space is limited and reservations are required. You can make a reservation by going to nature.org.
If you have PSAs you want on the air or in this newsletter, head to www.marfapublicradio.org/psa.
