Frack Sand CEO: Oil Companies Cannot Drill Themselves Out Of This Depression -- March 28, 2015

FuelFix is reporting:

The message that a scientific approach should trump the all-out wildcatting of the fading shale boom is echoing through more corridors of the energy industry. 

But oil producers may not want to hear it. Frac sand suppliers say U.S. oil producers should use the lull in drilling as a chance to step back and study mountains of oil field data to see which blends of water, sand and chemicals are best for blasting open shale rock, a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Rapid-fire drilling – a practice that shale producers used during the boom to keep output rising over natural well depletion – often yielded bad, unproductive wells, as does hasty hydraulic fracturing, they say.

“There’s a high failure rate because we don’t do our homework,” said Jim Venditto, vice president of technical services at Trican Well Service, a fracturing firm that coats sand in material that makes it more buoyant and easier to pump into a well.

He said producers have been talking more about finding ways to bolster well productivity, even as they send hundreds of drilling rigs to the sidelines. “You’re not going to be able to drill your way out of this,” Venditto said. “Every so often we have to reinvent the oil industry again.”