Infill Thoughts

The debate around in-basin 40/70 grade frac sand quality heated up earlier this week when one Permian sand producer argued vigorously that customers will not buy local 40/70 because it is too fine and fragile. Preferred Sands, whose West Texas reserve profile is 50% 40/70, shared their response to this …

Historically, the sand dune fields in Winkler County Texas have primarily been used for cattle ranching. In the span of 9 months, 14 massive sand mines have been permitted in these ranchers’ backyards. Winkler ranches don’t change hands often – most have been in the same families for generations. So …

The Kermit area is extremely dry, having averaged just 11 inches of precipitation per year since 2000 per NOAA records. That’s only about 1/3rd of the national average. Locals we are in contact with as well as some environmental experts we’ve spoken with recently have mentioned that it has been …

In this update we examine drilling permit data for South Texas to infer how the storm and subsequent flooding has impacted drilling rig demand in the region. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free …

As the Permian frac sand mining story moves from the exploration phase to the execution phase, we thought it’d be interesting to get Tommy Mathews‘s view on the challenges and considerations that Permian miners should be thinking about as they enter production mode. The land grab is over. It’s time …

Last week, more than 75 oilfield executive presented their outlooks at the Barclays Energy-Power conference in New York. We thumbed through all the transcripts to extract the most interesting new insights on the frac sand market. We glossed over pedestrian talking points, capturing only new and interesting stuff that we …

Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure’s shale presence is expanding rapidly. If you blink you might miss their next system deployment (most deployments are configured as silo six-packs). In this update, a look at their progress, their system up close and personal, and what’s next for this fast growing newcomer in the US …

During the third quarter, the US onshore rig count trajectory has finally leveled off. We wrote about the stall a couple weeks ago in this update.  Speaking at an investor conference last week, two leading land drillers shrugged off the industry-wide rig count stall. See what they said in the …

When I first met Todd Bush, he was laying the groundwork for the research firm he co-founded in 2012, Energent Group. Even back then when his databases and software were in their early stages of development I recall being impressed by the granularity of the charts and output he was generating. …

At this point in the cycle, what every US shale market observer wants to know is when that big wave of newbuild pressure pumping equipment orders is going to hit. Pricing has been on the rise for over a year. Re-deployments have been the supply growth story so far, but …