Link here.
VOCA, Texas - This tiny corner of Texas Hill Country doesn't have
oil or gas riches, but it does hold vast deposits of a granular
commodity highly-coveted by energy companies: sand.
As the use of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing
has skyrocketed in the U.S. amid the shale boom, demand for so-called
"frac sand" has also increased dramatically. Demand for sand is so
acute that some large oil and gas producers, such as EOG Resources Inc.
and Pioneer Natural Resources Co., have taken the unusual step of
buying their own sand plants in order to secure long-term supplies and
try to put a lid on high prices.
Energy companies have managed to unleash a bounty of oil and natural
gas by creating fissures in shale rock with high-pressure streams of
water, allowing hydrocarbons trapped within to escape to the surface.
The rounded silica sand extracted from the mines here--about 120 miles
northwest of Austin--and other sites around the country, is used as a
"proppant"--a material that holds these cracks open.
These stories continue to amaze me. I think it is amazing how so many areas of the country are affected by the Bakken:
- the technology developed in the Bakken is being taken everywhere
- fracking sand from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas
- ceramics from Texas, China, possibly North Dakota
- modular housing from out-of-state
- railroads taking crude oil to usual points, but now to East Coast refineries
- truck manufacturing in Portland, Oregon
- specialty steel from ???
- workers from Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado
- spaceholder for more (no typo)
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