Pullback In US Fracking Sand Use Pressures Producers -- Reuters -- August 16, 2017

Link here.

The lede:

U.S. shale oil companies are pulling back on the amount of sand they use to hydraulically fracture new wells, responding to rising prices of the material that are driving up costs.

Investors worry a slowdown in sand use, combined with new mining capacity coming online, could lead to a glut of the material and bring down prices. The worries have pressured shares of sand companies.

Sand prices soared in the last year as oil companies ramped up shale drilling and production.

But with crude prices below where they started the year, oil producers are employing new well designs and chemical agents that lessen the use of sand that represents around 12 percent of the cost of drilling and fracturing.

The Bakken was not mentioned. The last sentence:

Atlas Consulting's Salazar said of the major U.S. shale basins, only two - Haynesville and Eagle Ford - are pumping in more sand per well.

I started following this story in March, 2017, when it was being reported that operators were using increasing amounts of proppant (sand) to frack their wells. I was not seeing that in the Bakken so I was curious to track it. By late July, 2017, I had lost interest. I didn't see a lot of difference in the amount of sand being used, except perhaps in some EOG wells. EOG was clearly an outlier, but even EOG did not consistently use larger amounts of sand.

There are several other stories involving fracking that should also be addressed:

• workovers
• mini-fracks
• re-charging effect
• halo effect
• anecdotal: a refrack with only 5 million lbs of sand resulting in huge result (again, if accurate data)