The oil industry is booming. This West Texas small business worries it’s been left behind.

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GOLDSMITH — It’s Friday, which means it’s hamburger day at Benro Pump and Supply.

Employees of this family-owned company gather around the grill outside the garage. In the background are endless rows of pipes, tools and other equipment that help lift the vast oil supply in the Permian Basin.

A year ago, the shop that makes custom oil pumps was busy. So while owner Ben Bilbrey, his wife Corinna, and their team, enjoyed the peaceful afternoon in July, anxiety loomed.

It's not usually this quiet.

“It’s been an unusual year,” Bilbrey said. “You do get a little nervous, but you just gotta get through it.”

In his lifetime, Bilbrey has seen the ups and downs of the oil and gas industry. And yet, while the industry is mounting record profits, there are fewer locally-owned and family-operated companies like his in West Texas.

The bustling industry is both changing and contracting. Corporate mergers mean fewer customers for oil equipment companies like Bilbrey’s. And technological advances also allow big oil to do more with fewer people and less equipment.

To be sure, the 10-person company established in 1984 is still making a profit: 40% last year. But the phone isn’t ringing like it used to.

Six years ago, Bilbrey installed and serviced pumps for big names like Apache Corporation, Blackbeard Operating, and Conoco Philips. He lost their business during the early days of the pandemic when oil production briefly paused. Bilbrey has tried unsuccessfully to convince them to use his services. He hopes to lock in a deal soon.

When the phone does ring, companies bargain for lower prices. They want Bilbrey to meet the cost of a wholesale pump. Those lower prices are not realistic, he said, if he wants to keep the company afloat. And his pumps are expensive because they are meant to last as long as the industry does.

Corinna stays positive.

“We're in it for the long haul, and we know the life of that pump,” she said. Even when there is a downturn in the market — and there is none in sight — “Pumps are still pumping.”

Earlier in the day, one of Bilbrey’s employees, Benny Ford, drove out to an abandoned lot. Scraps of a pumpjack and old pipes were strewn all over the place. A ditch was filled with a rank chemical liquid.

A customer’s well had dried up after four years. The company had no other use for it. Ford was sent there to collect the 24-foot pump.

Days before Ford arrived, a crew of rig hands dug out the pump. The workers, employed by a well-servicing company, came with a truck with a rig mounted on its bed. Inside the rig, a long frame called the derrick lifted the steel tower until it is stood upright above the wellhead.

The workers used large tongs to pull up the pump and other equipment from underground.

One excavation can take hours. Once the pump is out, the company must seal the well. By the time Ford drove up to the site, all he needed to do was retrieve the pump.

The 25-year-old assistant foreman clipped the pump onto hooks on the passenger side of his truck and began the 15-minute drive back to the office.

Ford was hired at Benro Pump in 2019. In his previous job, the Oklahoma native helped build electrical substations in the oil fields. It was a good-paying gig, he said. But the 14-hour shifts with no holidays were terrible.

After a year on the job, he took a break. When it was time to go back to work, he saw a job listing at Benro Pump. Ford knew nothing about pumps when he was interviewed but said he was a quick study.

Much like Ford, Bilbrey, the company’s founder, didn’t know much about pumps when he started working the oil fields.

Bilbrey was 19 when he started his first job in the oil fields, manufacturing, delivering and servicing pumps that draw fossil fuels from thousands of feet underground. Like his father before him, he learned the trade.

In 1984, he decided he had enough experience to open a business. To fund the idea, he took on $300,000 in debt, which he used to buy the materials and equipment and hire employees. He named it Benro, an amalgam of his name and the name of his ex-wife, Rodine.

The name stuck. So has the business, despite the winding economic downturns in the oil and gas industry that followed.

The company’s custom-made pumps are a simple yet fool-proof method that oil companies rely on to continue accumulating oil from a well that was drilled years ago. Where there are drilling rigs, a pump follows.

Bilbrey retired in 2014, but during his retirement, he said management issues festered. He returned five years later and recruited his wife, Corinna, to sort out the company’s books. His daughter manages the federal workforce guidelines. By 2021, it was a full-fledged family business.

Together they oversee a team of laborers who build pumps that can withstand the heaving pressure from lifting the fossil fuels thousands of feet below the ground for years.

Bilbrey prides himself on the quality of the pumps. The company builds different models, which range dramatically in price. A so-called Cadillac pump, built with high-grade metals and parts, which can go deeper, can cost up to $17,000. These pumps last up to 20 years. His team will also service the equipment and replace parts quickly.

Bilbrey does sell a more generic pump, which costs between $4,000 and $6,000 and is expected to last about a year.

Bilbrey’s overhead is about $200,000, he said. Costs add up quick. And this year, the company also will spend roughly $170,000 on insurance, almost double what they spent in 2022. That’s because larger oil companies require more expensive liability protections. They are bracing for an additional increase next month in insurance costs.

“It's hard for us because we don't sell the lowest price thing, we sell the best service and we sell high quality,” said Corinna. “And that's hard when your customers are driven by numbers.”

Despite changes in drilling, companies will still need pumps to collect oil from wells. Bilbrey said companies need to be persuaded to spend that kind of money on a quality pump when they can get it cheaper from a wholesaler, whose pumps sell for 10-15% less. Though it is not much of a difference, Bilbrey said larger companies — of which there are more than 30 in the area — don’t offer the continued dedicated service that Benro Pump does.

The industry is changing how it drills. Companies are drilling with fewer rotary rigs, the towers of steel that crews mount to drill. Fewer rigs mean fewer holes in the ground and, over time, less demand for pumps.

The change is due in part to horizontal fracking, a practice that allows companies to reach further distances in the layers of rock containing fossil fuels without having to drill deeper. Longer wells call for less of them.

Data shows the number of wells is declining. According to Baker Hughes, which has tracked rig counts for decades, there were 370 rigs in Texas operated by oil companies in March 2023. That number fell to 294 in March of 2024.

The number of exploration and production companies that find and drill for oil is also decreasing. There are 16% fewer producers than in 2021 — approximately 116 companies have been purchased or merged into larger ones, according to data provided by Rystad Energy.

Thomas Jacob, senior vice president of oil field services and data research at Rystad Energy, said mergers contribute to fewer rigs. He said companies don’t always add up their rigs.

At least six companies merged or absorbed others in 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. The companies, which included Chevron, Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Diamondback Energy, spent $234 billion on mergers and acquisitions.

Jacob said that mergers affect the way big oil companies do business. Larger companies may prefer to work with vendors and contractors whose business is as large as theirs. This disparately impacts smaller oil companies that must compete with wholesalers who carry much more product, charge less and employ more people. Smaller companies also can’t always afford the expenses that come with working for a big company, like higher insurance costs.

“We are seeing these smaller companies lose work, they've had to significantly slash prices to see if they can keep going,” he said. “A few of them have started to declare bankruptcy.”

The drive south from the lease roads to the shop took Ford about 15 minutes. There, he debriefed his coworkers.

Benro Pump waits for the phone to ring. Echoing through the normally loud and rowdy shop is the creak of swiveling chairs and the searing meat. The grilling cools their nerves.

The workers can’t help but think about what the future of the oil and gas industry holds. Or how the presidential election in November will affect production — and whether the consequences will impact their business.

Ben Bilbrey has seen the industry in its highs and lows. He is used to the instability.

Ford, on the other hand, hasn't.

“It scares me sometimes."

Disclosure: Apache Corporation and Cadillac have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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