We Found A New Wet Sand Mine In The Permian From A Familiar Name [Data Alert]

There’s more damp sand becoming available in the Permian, continuing a trend we quantified recently here. Specifically, we’ve identified a small new wet sand mine that is operational now, located south of Odessa. Vista Minerals (formerly Vista Proppants and Logistics) is behind the project.

Although we’ve heard some rumblings about this project for several months now, including recently on the sidelines of the frac sand conference in San Antonio, Vista managed to keep this project under wraps pretty well as it came together. They still aren’t commenting on it, so we are going off public record for this update.

This week, we did some homework and learned quite a bit about the “Locker Mine” (as it is named in Federal filings) from our review of public records and satellite imagery.

The new site is registered under a shell company name – Damp SandCo, LLC – but public records link the shell co to Vista Minerals. Damp SandCo, LLC shares the same HQ address in Fort Worth as Vista Minerals does, and public filings list Vprop Operating as a contact. The APO permit lists Vista’s Granbury mine site as the mailing address in the contact info. Recall that Vista Proppants (or VProp) recently rebranded as Vista Minerals and their new website shows their new logo and name.

Data clients should go grab the Permian mine database we refreshed this morning here if they would like to see coordinates, permit details, satellite imagery, strategy analysis and more.

For all Infill Thinking members, here are some key takeaways from our research on the new mine:

• • new site is located in Crane County, south of Odessa
  • this is Vista’s second Permian local sand plant
  • it is about 25 miles away from Vista’s flagship Permian mine as the crow flies
  • location suggests new site is targeting southern Midland Basin customers, expanding their markets served with logistical advantage and officially moving into the wet sand market with a dedicated wet sand site
  • satellite imagery and our firsthand knowledge from putting boots on the ground in this area many times suggests that this site has extensive mineable material (i.e. decades of reserves)
  • based on what we can see of the plant in recent satellite imagery, we’d estimate nameplate will be in the 1 to 2mmtpa range
  • as the shell company name suggests, this appears in the satellite imagery we reviewed to be a wet sand only operation (we don’t see dryers on location), but we do find some air permitting activity in Sept / Oct here
  • TX APO permit was completed in August, and MSHA lists site status as “New Mine” (no headcount or hours reported yet, suggesting recent startup – we are going with an October online assumption based on recent satellite imagery)
  • satellite imagery shot in mid-October showed that the site is fully built, operational, and appears to have thousands of tons of product stockpiled on the ground ready to ship (see the Excel database comment on the new mine for the image)

More details in the data here>