A movable counterweight that can reduce lifting and lowering torque. In one embodiment, a beam pumping unit can have a movable beam counterweight attached to a positioning drive on the beam and can be intelligently positioned to achieve lowest net torque required by one or more of a prime mover and lowest net gear torque in in the speed reducer. Optionally, positioning can be calculated by one or more of monitoring current requirements of the motor and monitoring the beam load with a load cell, which can then be merged with crank position readings and processed into signals sent to the positioning drive, which causes the counterweight to move to the best position along the on the length of the beam to achieve one or more of near to lowest current draw by the prime mover and lowest net gear torque in in the speed reducer.