Infill Thoughts

The US onshore rig market continues to consolidate not because of M&A but thanks to the dominance of horizontal drilling and rig specification escalation. In the four charts below, we share a time series of market share charts for Nabors Industries, Patterson-UTI, Helmerich & Payne and Precision Drilling. There’s a …

Since the Texas Comptroller’s letter singled out sand producers last week, West Texas miners have been inundated with questions. Investors and customers alike are becoming more concerned than ever about the trend’s exposure to Dune Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) habitat. We provide highlights from one company’s response supplemented with our firsthand knowledge from a …

In this update, more from our recent trip behind the scenes in the Permian Basin frac sand mining build-out including contract price datapoints, lizard talk, a mine location identified, and trucking observations and deductions. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this …

Crowd sourced datapoints and firsthand observations from our Permian visit this week are being shared in a series of “quick hits.” These bullet point lists include field-level market intelligence on wellsite trends, the frac sand mining rush, and the Permian oilfield at large. There’s a lot more to this story… …

This week we miled up the rental car, dirtied up the steel toes, and took it all in out in the Permian Basin. General market observations from our Permian visit will be provided via several installments of these “quick hit” pieces as we process and compile what we’ve learned. Our …

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. …