Chinese Proppants -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

The Reuters link here.

US imports of the proppants from China have surged 12-fold since 2008 ... At year's end, Chinese imports will account for 13 percent of the total North American ceramic proppant market ...

The boom may not last forever. US manufacturers are now gearing up to challenge the Chinese. Prices have surged by 60 percents in two years and experts expect China's own shale revolution to eventually absorb supply.

Names:

• Houston-based Carbo Ceramics
• French Saint Gobain
• China: a dozen mostly smaller, independent firms; one prominent Chinese firm: Guizhou

Click on "proppants" label/tag at bottom of the blog for other postings on ceramics at this site.

A big thank-you to AC22 for alerting me to link.

By the way, while I was in Williston -- heart of the Bakken -- I became aware of local residents of North Dakota being sent to China to visit the Chinese proppant factories, learn how to market ceramics, and then come back to North Dakota as dealers, salesmen, etc. What a huge opportunity.

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It seems half the linked article is devoted to the Bakken; data points:

• shipped to west coast ports (Long Beach, CA; Seattle, WA)
• shipped by train
• BNSF: largest rail carrier in the North Dakota's oil fields; expects ceramic freight volumes to double next year
• ceramic demand has quadrupled to 70 billion lbs since 2009
• percent of ceramics in fracking has risen from 10 to 15 percent in that time period
• typical Bakken well used 3 million lbs of proppants
• ceramic proppants have grown to 30 percent share of total proppants (most is still sand)
• sand crushed at depth
• sand: 40 cents/lb
• ceramics: $4/lb
• resin-coated sand: alternative to ceramics; cost not stated
• demand for sand growing in ND
• most prized sand: Ottawa sands from Wisconsin and Minnesota
• HAL and BHI both setting up their own mines to control costs