A round up of various talking points and trends in the US frac market as it stands today including comments on pricing, utilization, availability, contracting activity, and completion size trends. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

Although the drilling rig itself is only about 10% of total onshore well costs these days, it has become the epicenter of the industry’s latest technology craze: automation, digitization, and big data. As market leaders embark on a new technology cycle, drilling days/well are poised to keep trending down. One day …

About a month ago, we noticed a material spike in permitting activity for horizontal wells in the Permian Basin. Based on historical data, the March spike suggested that the Permian horizontal rig count could increase further 25%. We look at what’s happened since then, and update our permitting analysis for April data in this …

Two months ago, we published an in-depth report on Encana’s 64-well monster pad, Davidson, in the Permian Basin. At the time, 19 new wells were being drilled on the pad. Those wells have now been completed. In this update, we explore the very latest details on their production, status, and Encana’s large …

The oilfield service IPO surge this year has been met with a hostile energy tape. Over the past week, two oilfield service IPOs attempted to cross the finish line: Liberty Oilfield Services and Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure. Both were met with pushback. But Solaris got done and Liberty didn’t. Here’s why and what it …

1Q17 reporting season is drawing to a close. Over the past week, we heard from two more frac sand miners: Smart Sand Inc. and Emerge Energy Services. To cap off earnings season, we went back through our conference call notes from these two producers and pulled out the eight most important points …

Smart Sand Inc., the newly public Northern White producer (February IPO), announced another Oakdale plant expansion on Thursday. This is the second expansion announced already this year and the latest example of the kind of brownfield expansion that is conspiring with regional sands to make operators happy and sand investors nervous. …

We actively monitor spending patterns for approximately 50 public independent operators. With virtually all of their 1Q17 results disclosed over the past week or two, we can now report some detailed insights on what their spending during the first quarter of the year means for the rest of 2017. There’s a lot …

In a piece several weeks ago, we detailed how Range Resource handled material frac interference in their Terryville field (see point 5). Since then most of the E&P universe has reported earnings. On conference calls, we heard more concern related to frac communication, and learned more about how E&Ps are dealing with it. …

We have uncovered two more future frac sand mines in the heart of the Permian. These sites take our “confirmed planned site” count up to 6 in the area – a figure that could easily be 10 by the end of May. Although the market is aware that Permian sand mines …