Infill Thoughts

The letter’s rhetoric will almost certainly cause some market observers to start taking the under on how much Permian sand is actually going to make it out of local mines. It will almost certainly be looked back on as a starting point for more formal environmental opposition. We summarize the …

Over the past two weeks, we’ve begun to hear sand buyers express their take on the Permian Basin frac sand mining rush for the first time. What they are saying and our analysis of implications in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  …

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and no one in the oilfield understands necessity better than the operators themselves. Today, tight oil is at the technological forefront of the oil and gas industry. Exploiting low permeability, heterogeneous rock at $50 oil makes invention and innovation a requisite not …

We fully expected Smart Sand to announce their entrance into the Permian sand rush today. They did not because of the Dune Sagebrush Lizard. What they said and our thoughts on what this means for the in-basin sand story in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login …

We updated our table of planned frac sand mining facilities in the Permian after several readers asked for the latest file this week. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. …

In our latest US onshore rig count forecast (updated in April), we estimated that active drilling rigs would peak at 950 units this year. As we stand today with 934 rigs turning to the right, our prediction leaves only ~16 rig additions left until hitting a US drilling plateau in …

A year from now on the Kermit blacktop, it will be 110° Fahrenheit with a 90% chance of gridlock. We believe competitive advantage will increasingly be tied to location and logistics as in-basin mines battle for market share. In this update, we rank each of the hopeful new mines based …

We believe that our readers’ response to news can often be more compelling than the report itself, for our readership comprises some of the industry’s brightest minds, including folks who are working on (or buying from) similar initiatives in the field. See what your fellow Infill Thinkers are saying about …

If 2H17 shale capex were on the operating table, our diagnosis would be that the patient’s vitals are stable and within normal limits. But as the old newspaper saying goes: “if it bleeds it leads,” so many reports continue to chose fear over reality. We dig into the numbers to …

There’s been some talk in the market this week that sand customers might be skeptical of inking deals with startup sand producers. But what we heard from one E&P on Wednesday suggests just the opposite… Black Mountain has at least one long-term deal in the bag and probably more that …