A biweekly read on what's actually moving in Permian Basin industrial real estate.
Every other Saturday, The Index rounds up what happened across Midland, Odessa, and Pecos over the past two weeks, so it's ready for you over coffee before the week's calls start. Not a real-time feed, a biweekly one: signal over noise.
October 4, 2026 · covering the two weeks since the Sept 19 edition
Last edition left off with WTI easing from $107 to just under $100. This one, the November contract traded between $89.38 and $94.61 the entire two weeks and settled at $91.11 on Oct 2. The reason is supply coming back, not demand falling off. Saudi Arabia had roughly half the flow restored on its East-West pipeline, the one that bypasses Hormuz, by Sept 28, its crude exports hit 6 million barrels a day in September, the most since the war started, and crude shipments through the Strait itself are back to prewar levels. Fuel and product shipments are still constrained, but the crude that sets our price is moving again.
OPEC+ met Sunday and held November quotas where they are, the second month of the pause, and for the same reason as last time: Gulf members are still pumping below their targets, so raising a number nobody can hit means nothing. Next meeting is Nov 1. For the Basin, a $90 handle is still a very good price, it's just no longer a windfall one.
Oil fell, rates didn't. The 10-year went from 4.96% on Sept 22 to 5.29% on Sept 30, its highest level since 2002, and closed above 5% every trading day from Sept 23 on. Friday's jobs report should have been the relief: 29,000 jobs added against 84,000 expected, unemployment up to 4.2%, August revised down. The odds of another Fed hike at the Oct 27-28 meeting collapsed from about 70% to about 14% on the news, and the 10-year still finished the day higher, at 5.28%.
That's the part worth sitting with. A rate benchmark that rises on a weak jobs report is telling you the market is worried about something other than the Fed, inflation and deficits mostly, and that cap rates aren't getting any help from Washington either way. Anyone underwriting a Permian industrial deal today is doing it against the most expensive debt in over twenty years, with no visible catalyst for that to change this quarter.
The Dallas Fed's third-quarter energy survey came out Sept 30, collected from 125 firms right in the middle of the Fed hike and the oil pullback. Activity is still growing, but slower: the business activity index dropped to 38.8 from 46.1. Oil production kept rising, the production index moved to 20.7 from 15.0, and gas production jumped harder. The executives surveyed expect WTI to end the year at about $88, which is right where it already sits, with the range running from $70 to $126.
Two Basin-specific items. First, 46% of Permian-focused firms reported theft on their locations this quarter, against 14% in every other basin, and nearly half of those called it targeted and organized rather than opportunistic. If you own or manage a yard out here, fencing, lighting, and camera coverage are now underwriting items, not nice-to-haves. Second, the Permian held 269 oil rigs in Friday's Baker Hughes count, flat to slightly down, which tracks with the survey: operators are producing more out of the rigs they have, not adding rigs at $90.
The Big Hill to Sand Lake segment, the 177-mile 765-kV line that would end about six miles northeast of Pecos and cross Pecos, Reeves, Ward, Ector, Winkler, and Crane counties, was supposed to get a commission vote on Sept 25 or Oct 2. It got neither. Because the PUC sent the upstream segment, Bell County East to Big Hill, back to the administrative judges on Sept 11 with two questions, whether the line is actually needed to meet reliability standards and what the congestion savings really are, it won't rule on either piece of the center path until those answers come back and the parties finish arguing over them. Then the Oct 2 meeting was cancelled altogether. Next open meeting is Oct 15, and there is no date for a decision.
So of the three 765-kV paths meant to bring East Texas power into the Basin, the southern line was approved in August, the Howard Solstice line was approved last month, and the one that actually lands at Pecos is the one going backward. On the data center side, nothing new: survey answers are due to ERCOT in mid-October, TCEQ's report to the governor is due Oct 19, and the full audit lands in December. If your tenant's expansion depends on grid power in Reeves or Ward County, the timeline just got longer, not shorter.
After two straight weeks of nothing, the real estate column has three real entries. Locus FS, the oilfield chemicals arm of Locus Bio-Energy, bought a company-owned production facility in Midland on Sept 22 with about three times the blending capacity of its existing Midland plant, room to reach five times, and double the under-roof storage. MMR, the largest open-shop electrical contractor in the Basin, cut the ribbon Sept 23 on its renovated Odessa facility, adding an enclosed mechanic shop. And Waste Energy Corp finished expanding its Midland waste-tire conversion campus to about 12.5 acres on Sept 25, adding roughly 7,500 square feet of shop for about 12,500 enclosed. None of these are headline deals. All three are oilfield service companies buying or building more room in Midland-Odessa, which is exactly the demand this market runs on.
No EDC announcements anywhere in the Basin, and no new TxDOT corridor postings on I-20, Loop 250, Loop 338, or US 285 this window. On the Railroad Commission fight, the oversight committee hasn't rescheduled the hearing Commissioner Christian skipped, though the chairman said he'd subpoena him if he skips the next one. One RRC seat is on the Nov 3 ballot, and voter registration closes Oct 5.
The oil spike unwound in two weeks. The rate spike didn't, and a weak jobs report couldn't move it. Price your deals off $90 oil and 5.25% money, not off either of last month's peaks, and don't expect the second number to bail you out this year.
If you're a tenant, oil at $90 and operators still growing production means your landlord isn't desperate, so negotiate on term and buildout, not on face rent. If you're a buyer, the 10-year at 5.28% means cash offers win and leveraged ones need a real story. If you're a landowner between Pecos and Odessa waiting on the 765-kV line to make your dirt worth more, the PUC just told you to keep waiting. And lock your yard. Nearly half the operators out here are getting robbed.