We’re excited to have Larry Richards serving as the President of the 2023 PBIOS.

Larry has served in many leadership roles throughout the industry over his 35-year career and has built entrepreneurial teams and companies that have made a lasting impact. In the early 1990’s Continental Emsco was the second largest rig manufacturer and oilfield supply store in North America. Over the years Richards held several executive roles, from starting the well servicing division to VP of sales and marketing for the overall company.

Richards left Emsco in 1999 to join Key Energy in a newly created role where he became the VP of Operations Support. In this role, Richards led the rig and trucking equipment teams, standardization and refurbishment programs, vendor agreements and asset utilization. In 2003 Richards had a chance to run a company and he took it.

Over a 12-year period he and his team grew Midland based Hy-bon Engineering from a regional supplier of vapor recovery units to a globally recognized leader in vent gas management; building revenues from $4.5M to over $75M and driving the lost time incident rate from 6.98 to 0.64.

After the successful sale of Hy-bon, Richards and two other PBIOS board members backed a young entrepreneur from Odessa in 2017. They were successful in building a great team of people, specializing in automated valves, flow meters and instrumentation. Van Zandt Controls grew from $6M revenue to over $50M in less than 5 years, and Richards retired following the successful sale of the company last year.

Larry is an avid outdoorsman and conservationist, and most enjoys time with his wife of 34 years Sondra and their two sons, Parker & Weston.  He currently serves as a board advisor for Bold Production Services and the Endowment Board for Casa de Amigos. His past board positions include Renovar Energy (landfill gas), Gradiant Energy (water recycling), Ro-flo (compression) PBPA and chairing the West Texas Export Council.