Updates
October 21, 2014: just after posting the note below, Don sends me the link to this story. Reuters is reporting: investors are putting money into funds that track oil prices at the fastest rate in two years, betting that crude will rebound from a bear market.
The four biggest oil exchange-traded products listed in the U.S. have received a combined $334 million so far this month, the most since October 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares outstanding of the funds, including the United States Oil Fund and ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil, rose to 55 million yesterday, a nine-month high.
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Original Post
A long time ago I said it was taking a 100-unit train of fracking sand to frack one well. It's nice to see someone confirm my math. Reuters is reporting:
As fracking accelerates in North American shale fields, oilfield services providers Halliburton Co and Baker Hughes Inc are stockpiling sand to protect themselves against rising costs and are buying more railcars to transport the haul.
Halliburton, the world's largest provider of fracking services, is more than doubling its railcar fleet and capacity for sand terminals - where sand is stored and transferred to truck from rail. It had about 3,500 railcars under management as of June 30.
Baker Hughes, the world's No.3 oilfield services provider, said at the Barclays CEO Energy Power conference last month that it had "significantly" increased the number of its railcars and is buying more sand under contract, which helps buffer it against price rises.
Companies are pumping in as much as a trainload of frac sand into a single well to coax more oil and gas from shale rocks.
But the shale rush, especially in Texas and North Dakota, coupled with a rail jam that began after last year's severe winter has resulted in shortage of sand at drilling sites.For newbies, my thoughts which I sent to Don, after reading the above article:
It certainly doesn't look like folks are leaving the Bakken despite slumping oil prices.
In the Bakken, EOG was the first to go from 1 million lbs of proppant to 10 million and even 12 - 14 million lbs of proppant to frack a well.
BEXP/Statoil started with and has pretty much stayed with 4 million lbs.
Most recently CLR has said that "large volume proppant" is the answer. CLR has generally gone with 1 - 4 million lbs. If CLR goes with 10 million lbs per well, one can see why so much sand is going to be needed.Again, these are my thoughts, my opinions, what I thought I saw based on file reports and corporate presentations. They may be completely wrong. If this information is important to you, go to the source.
I sometimes use "sand" colloquially to refer to "proppant," which could be sand alone, ceramic alone, or some combination of both. I am unaware of anything other than sand and man-made ceramic being used as proppant (there are other components mixed with sand/ceramic; whether or not others consider that "proppant," I don't know. For me proppant is sand/ceramic.
Greetings, Mr. Oksol. This past July - in the Eagle Ford - EOG had a well with an IP of over 8,500 boepd. The lateral was about one mile in length and they used an incredible almost 16 million lbs of sand.
ReplyDeleteI read that on a forum post and have not yet been able to verify it, but it seemed to be both a credible and informed source.
That would not surprise -- EOG was using 10 million to 12 million lbs routinely in the Bakken; I think I recall one well with 14 million lbs by EOG. Amazing. Thank you for taking time to pass that along.
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