Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Fracking Sand --

Link here.

With recent interest in "fracking sand" in Minnesota, I thought folks might like to see a picture of "perfect" fracking sand:
Near the muddy banks of Hay Creek, a popular trout stream, are significant bluffs covered with a hardwood forest of oak, bass wood and black cherry trees.

Underneath the forested land is an increasingly valuable resource called “frac” sand, highly sought after for its size and strength. With perfectly round grains that look like brown sugar crystals, the sand is ideal for the oil and natural gas industry, which uses it to extract fuel from underground rock in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The picture is at the link.

Minnesota locals are likely to kill the project. My hunch is there is "perfect" sand elsewhere.

2 comments:

  1. Mr Oksol, I went to one of your links and reviewed the drilling process (very nice collections of videos) and understood the entire process with the exceptions of two items...

    1) First, how in heck is the casing installed on a horizontal leg of a well? How does it go around the bend?

    2) I do not understand the reason why sand is introduced AFTER the fracking is completed? What does the
    sand do?

    Thank you in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't understand the the intricacies either.

    The sand/proppants hold open the seams for the oil to migrate to the borehole.

    ReplyDelete

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