More On The Texas Sand Mines -- Wow, I Love Free Market Capitalism -- Mine, Mine, Mine -- September 16, 2017

I most recently talked about Texas fracking sand just a few weeks ago. Now, another article from The Wall Street Journal:

Big oil-field sand suppliers, Wall Street firms and other investors have been buying up swaths of the West Texas desert.

These investors aim to mine and sell the sand to drillers in the region's booming Permian Basin, who need large quantities of sand to extract oil and gas from shale formations.

Texas energy producers have typically bought the millions of pounds of sand that each well requires from mines located far from their drilling fields. After oil prices collapsed in late 2014, though, cost-conscious drillers reconsidered their well designs and recipes for the slurries they blast underground to unleash fuel from shale formations.

Many West Texas drillers discovered that they could replace sand they had been shipping from mines 1,300 miles away in Wisconsin with finer grades found in dunes nearby. Doing so eliminates rail costs that sometimes are equal to or more than the sand itself.

Now investors are lining up to supply local sand to West Texas drillers.

"Local sand is a huge disrupter that is beneficial to the shale producers," said Ben "Bud" Brigham, an Austin geophysicist who built and sold two oil companies and now is plowing some of his profits into sand pits.

Mr. Brigham is using proceeds from his recent $2.55 billion sale of Brigham Resources to fund a Permian mining operation called Atlas Sand Co., which he expects to begin sand production in the second quarter.

The Atlas mine is one of at least 18 under way or proposed for the desert outside Midland, Texas.

The first, Hi-Crush Partners LP's 3-million-ton-a-year facility, began operations in July. More than a dozen plan to open over the next year. The prospect of tens of millions of tons of Permian sand coming to market could drive down sand prices that have been rising nationally.

Analysts say that prices rose to as much as $45 a ton earlier in the year, from as little as $15 a ton last year.

With competition heating up in West Texas, analysts say it's unlikely that all the planned mines will be get built. 

Much more at the link.