One of the biggest challenges relative to Permian sand mine infrastructure, which is critical to the successful development of these facilities, is the availability of a viable supply of water for not only sand production, but potable use as well. A significant amount of effort has gone into finding reliable …

You probably saw this press release yesterday from Shale Support announcing in-basin M&A. We spoke by phone today with Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Bowen and got the full scoop. In addition to sand specifics, one of the big takeaways for us was that exploratory drilling and completions could heat up …

After oil’s 2014 crash, the US shale “popularity pendulum” swung hard against animal spirits, moving in favor of capital discipline. Outspending in shale is now taboo on both Wall Street and Main Street. But is the recent societal shift emblematic of lasting structural change or is it simply cyclical banter? …

In some large tight oil well AFEs these days, the frac sand line item can be as much as a quarter of well cost. Of course there is a lot more involved in shale development capex than just individual well costs. So for this chart of the day exercise, we …

With crude poised to potentially overflow Permian installed takeaway capacity, we thought it’d be worth taking a look at some big picture production vs. rig trends as the feature of this week’s regular rig count update. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research …

A 60-year old Northern White sand producer who has been selling proppant for the past 5-10 years is the latest company planning an in-basin frac sand entrance in Texas. We learned more details after conducting an exclusive interview with the company’s president this morning. There’s a lot more to this …

Business schools often talk about the life cycle of an industry: Introduction, Rapid Growth, Maturity, and, eventually, Decline. While the last 18 months has made it clear we are still in the Rapid Growth phase, much of that growth is also due to the maturation of the industry and the …

Is the frac sand greenfield rush of 2017/2018 finally over? It’s a question worth asking since each of the Big 4 markets are now flush with planned local sand supply. In the chart below, we compare our total 2019 frac sand demand estimates for four major markets to announced local frac …

In a slide deck released this morning, Schlumberger provided some interesting comments on frac sand. 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, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get Exclusive research update newsletters High-caliber, data-driven analysis …

We discuss how upstream is reacting to the midstream crisis in the Permian basins. 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, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get Exclusive research update newsletters High-caliber, data-driven analysis and …

Calling all San Francisco Infill Thinking members: we’d like to buy you a mid-morning coffee / bite, shake your hand and chat oilfield trends with you. We are hosting our next reader meet-up event in the Bay Area this coming Monday. This will be our 5th member appreciation event of …

In the wake of the Mid-Con sand rush, we were left wondering just how many US completions will have access to plentiful local sand supply in the years to come. So we did some math and discovered that X% of US completions will soon have a local sand mine in …

Over the past 12 months, US E&P procurement teams have been under immense pressure to keep up with frenetic growth. The time suck of dealing with immediate challenges like frac consumable shortages and logistics issues has been huge. In fact, because of these pressing issues we believe that some operators …

After recent requests from members, we’ve created several different looks at the geographical distribution of Mid-Con frac sand production sites on various maps. Members are welcome to download maps in pdf form. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be …

This is the second installment in our Research Rewind Series.  Rewinds aggregate our long-shelf life work on hot topics, providing comprehensive and thematic perspective. In our first installment, we looked back at the Permian Basin frac sand trucking situation. This week, we take a look back at the region where the frac sand …