Infill Thoughts

We have seen some recent market commentary interpreting a lackluster Permian rig count response to the 4Q17 oil price rally as evidence of a change in E&P behavior or appetite for Permian development. We do not believe this interpretation is accurate.  In this update, see what we believe are the real …

The OneStim JV between Schlumberger and Weatherford contemplated in March of 2017 has broken apart. Instead, Weatherford sold off its idled pressure pumping business to Schlumberger. What does this mean for the players and the market? We have some thoughts here… There’s a lot more to this story… To read …

The explosion of new industrial (silica) sand mining and processing operations in west Texas suggests the need for a review of one of the oldest known occupational diseases, silicosis, and the strategies that sand mining and processing operations can adopt to prevent the development of silicosis among their respective employees. …

On Wednesday afternoon this week, we had a chance to touch base with ProFrac executives to learn about their ambitious 2018 growth plan. Infill Thinking spoke by phone with Ladd Wilks and Matt Wilks – Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of ProFrac, respectively. Here’s what we learned… There’s a …

This year, we’ve found it helpful to keep an eye on the frac spread count (FSC) maintained by Primary Vision, Inc. So we called our friend Matt Johnson, a principal at the data firm that maintains the FSC, to learn more about how this metric came to be and the methodology behind …

Subscribers will relive a lively year of action by seeing the top research updates Infill Thinking published this year. We also revisit the amazing guest posts shared by 21 contributing subscribers this year. Our readers are the smartest in the business! There’s a lot more to this story… To read …

Big news in the Permian Basin local sands story from a player that has remained under the radar. This will have everyone talking today… 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 trial has expired, …

As the year draws to a close, here’s a look around the nation at the hottest onshore drilling basins and how they stack up this year on activity growth. Also included is a discussion of how the actual overall trend in US drilling compares to expectations a year ago and …

In July, we wrote about the risk of hidden delays for trucks carrying locally sourced frac sand from new plants direct to wells, noting that some challenges are impossible to understand by simply looking at a map. These are things like stop lights, rail crossings, road quality, school zones, left …

Water sourcing comes up often in our conversations with all sorts of different Permian Basin oilfield participants these days. Extreme thirst is the tight oil industry’s open secret – sourcing is more opaque than supply chain elements like rigs, horsepower, pipe and sand. We quantify surging water use in West …