Cost of Proppant

I cannot vouch for the veracity of the following but it was taken from a comment at The Oil Drum regarding the cost of various proppants:

Types of proppant and their crush strength (I assume psi)

• Pure silica sand --> 5,000 to 8,000 psi
• Resin coated silica sand ---> regular sand and multiply by 1.5x to 2x crush strength
• Ceramic proppant ---> 8,000 to 16,000 psi
• Resin coated ceramic proppant ---> Takes regular Ceramic and multiply by 1.5x to 2x crush strength

Prices for these sands range as follows (note spelling of "tone"; not sure if US dollar or other):

• Pure silica sand --- $50/tonne at mine (add in another $50 for transport)
• Resin coated silica sand --- $400 - $500 / tonne at plant (add in another $50 for transport)
• Ceramic proppant --- $500 - $800+ / tonne at ceramic factory. (add in another $50 for transport)
• Resin coated ceramic proppant --- Not entirely sure. Guessing $1,000 + / tonne

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On another note, I only looked at one of the well files of the four QEP MHA wells reporting IPs yesterday (the 2,000-bbl IPs in Heart Butte). The sundry form for that one well regarding completing/fracking the well was not yet scanned in. I didn't check the others; if I remember, I will check them later.

The reason this is important: if I call recall correctly, QEP stated at the time they bought Helis acreage: QEP does not use ceramic proppant; they use all sand whereas Helis uses a lot of ceramic proppant. If I recall correctly, QEP stated that there was no difference in initial production whether one used sand or ceramic. Long-term differences are not yet known, of course.