Sources
Proppants and other materials need for fracking, for sale.
Best link yet for "all you wanted to know about fracking sand."
Update
March 13, 2012: faulty well, not fracking, causing the problems -- WSJ.
January 6, 2012: now the kooks, idiots, hand-wringers are worried about fracking sand. This article is hardly worth linking, but it's here for three reasons: a) archives; b) another typical story in The Dickinson Press; and, c) follow-up to earlier stories about sand in Wisconsin. Same story, different "newspaper."
September 13, 2011: article on Texas frac sand. Great article. Especially since I call San Antonio home now.
Original Post
Link here. This link was sent to me by "anon 1." Thank you.
This is an incredible story, and it is incredible on many levels, none of which I will discuss. I will leave it up to the reader to think about the significance of this story. I can think of three or four themes that could be developed from this one story.
Rob Sidley is sitting on a gold mine, thanks to Mother Nature.Actually, while completing this, I thought of a fifth theme. Maybe later.
His family-owned company produces the special sand needed for the drilling boom in Ohio’s deep layer of Utica shale.
The sand is perfect for the hydraulic fracturing process — or fracking — which uses force to open cracks in the shale and free up natural gas, oil and other lucrative products.
The sand is nearly 100 percent quartz. It is round and spherical. It is hard and strong. It is resistant to water and chemicals. It is a sand that flows almost like a liquid. It can survive heavy pressures deep underground.
It takes 6,000 to 8,000 tons to frack one well, depending on the size of the well, so Sidley has a valuable commodity as drillers begin to focus their attention on eastern Ohio.
Note: someone can check my math, but the greatest amount of sand in fracking a Bakken well is upwards of four million pounds. BEXP is using 4 million pounds of proppants (mostly sand) but the "average" is probably closer to 2 million pounds. Dividing 4,000,000 by 2,000 lbs/ton, one gets about 2,000 tons, so either, a) my math is wrong; b) my facts are wrong regarding amount of sand being used in Bakken wells; and/or, c) Utica gas/oil wells are going to be using significantly more sand that Bakken wells. Maybe someone can tell me where I'm wrong.
That comment about "a sand that flows almost like a liquid," until I almost slipped and fell on ceramic proppant, I would not have understood that phrase. But stepping on ceramic proppant (which I suppose is much like this fracking sand) is literally like slipping on "black ice." A very interesting phenomenon.
