Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

There’s a new thread over in our members-only discussion forum. In it are observations on the new OSHA respirable crystalline silica regs that kick in just three months from now. We have some theories on why this critical issue isn’t yet getting the attention it deserves. It’s a much bigger …

The tentacles of in-basin frac sand exploration continue to extend and expand, wrapping new basins up in the plans of more new entrants. We review the latest development in the in-basin frac sand trend, which has drawn in yet another new entrant, this time on a new frontier where we’ve …

In this week’s weekly drilling rig count update, we take a closer look at Eagle Ford permitting trends. In addition, we are preparing for an upcoming Eagle Ford Shale market intelligence gathering trip. The early-April trip itinerary is taking shape and will include the following stops: There’s a lot more to …

Smart Sand’s 2018 budget is $85-$95mm. $71mm of that is spoken for with their Oakdale plant expansion, efficiency enhancements and routine maintenance. The $19mm remainder (at the midpoint) is where things get interesting… Will they go with boxes or silos? We think we have the answer… There’s a lot more …

These days when we ask C-level executives what keeps them up at night, labor is always at the tip of tongue. Recruiting and hiring are tough problems right now, for there are not enough experienced hands to staff all the equipment going to work this year. In this post a …

We spent the first week of February on location in the Permian Basin gathering market intelligence on the completions supply chain. In addition to taking it all in from the road this week, we have met with a variety of management teams and visited operations in the field. During our …

Atlas Sand was one of six in-basin sand plants (various stages of development) that we visited in the Permian Basin in early-February. Like with our five other in-basin frac sand stops, our purpose here was simply to learn more about the company’s in-basin initiatives and document our observations. In this …

We highlight an interesting appearance at a San Antonio area job fair 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. If you are new to Infill Thinking, or your …

Newly minted public frac company Liberty Oilfield Services hosted their first ever quarterly earnings call on Tuesday March 13, 2018. We are live-blogged it, and these are our key takeaways… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

The frac sand logistics market is a happening place these days. Here’s a few things we’ve uncovered in the past week or so… Have you seen these yet? There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, …

In our weekly rig count update this week, we slice and dice the latest drilling permit data in the Permian, divining clues about the future direction of the rig count in the Permian Basin and beyond. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To …

In the table below, we start with the range of estimates we’ve heard for Halliburton’s fleet count from our contacts recently and then we walk through what that implies for HHP at various crew size levels. Here’s our sensitivity table with a few thoughts on what you are looking at …

With the transformational impact of in-basin frac sand being written about by some of the mainstream press this week, we figured it’d be a good time to dust off our In-Basin Frac Sand Economic Impact Study published on InfillThinking.com two months ago back in early-January. If you joined Infill Thinking …

In our typical Friday guest posts, we get to hear the perspective of one Infill Thinking member at a time. And that’s usually pretty great, but as the old saying goes two heads is better than one. This post (or conversation really), is the brainchild of two Infill Thinkers who …

This is our fifth and final installment of Permian Points (quick notes from the road) from the first of two February trips we made to West Texas to gather on-the-ground market intelligence. Revisit Permian Points 1-4 at the links below: Permian Points 1 Permian Points 2 Permian Points 3 Permian …

On Tuesday evening, Solaris reported 4Q17 earnings. On Wednesday morning, we live-blogged our takeaways as we listened to their conference call. 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. If you …

This is our fourth installment of Permian Points – quick notes from our time on the road in West Texas in February. Permian Points 1 touched on the local sand business, including pricing and construction status updates; Permian Points 2 hit oilfield activity levels and labor; Permian Points 3 covered issues we …

In this weekly rig count update, we take a spin around the basins looking at relative performance from recent peaks and valleys. Studying rig count changes during mini-cycles within the big picture trend can illustrate the level of operator commitment to various plays and reveal drilling program volatility within each …

Shortly after pressing send on an early-February 2018 edition of the Infill Thinking newsletter, we hit the road in Odessa bound for a visit to High Roller Sand’s Kermit frac sand plant. The facility had been open less than a week at the time of our visit, about four weeks …

Things are happening fast in the oilfield / sandpatch right now. In addition to the Infill Thinking research updates published this week, some third-party stories crossed our desk that are worthy of passing along. All links will open a third-party article in a new tab. There’s a lot more to …

Each Friday in the last month of each quarter, we pass our keyboard to an Infill Thinking subscriber to weigh in from their field. We hope you enjoy reading these hand-picked contributions as much as we do. Guest Contributor(s) Introduction From Joseph Triepke: Today’s guest post comes to us from …

Industry sources tell Infill Thinking that [NAME REDACTED] mine’s first truckloads are rolling out from their new frac sand plant near Monahans as you read this update. Login to see the plant’s name that is shipping and learn exclusive details about the planned ramp up here…. There’s a lot more …

We have sorted through 1,000+ pages of E&P conference call transcripts to come up with the most important things customers are saying about frac sand. 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 look at the latest import data, trade protection measures, and capacity and pricing commentary from a market leader. 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. If you are new …

On the back of a strong conference call and roughly in-line 4Q17 results, Emerge Energy Services stock traded almost 7% higher yesterday. The following are some of our key takeaways from CEO Rick Shearer and his team’s commentary on the conference calls.  These points include the latest progress on San …

Here’s a Tyner Energy Tweet – good follow on Twitter by the way – that will probably resonate with anyone that has i) spent time in the Permian oilfield and also ii) seen the movie Mad Max which features a fantastical fleet of muscle trucks racing around a post-apocalyptic desert. …

With the flurry of E&P earnings reports last week came lots of talk about 2018 drilling programs. If we had to boil down all the drilling rig market commentary we heard into a key takeaway, it’d be this: There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full …

Here lately, the DSL has taken a back seat to other risks like trucking. But now it’s little head is popping up in the sand. Here’s the very latest on this species saga. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update …

The Texas regional sand plants in Brady TX are very busy today. Right now it’s all hands on deck and regional brown sand plays a very important role in this undersupplied market. But will it still be “all hands on deck” in late-2018 and 2019? We’ve picked up on some …

This is our second installment of Permian Points (oilfield service market quick hits) after devoting a full week to boots-on-the ground reconnaissance in the Permian Basin in February (revisit part one here). We met with industry contacts, visited facilities, and made observations from the road. Here are some of our key takeaways, thoughts, …

We live-blogged our notes and thoughts from the US Silica earnings conference call on 2/21/18… 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. If you are new to Infill Thinking, or …

We’ve learned exclusive details on the latest Eagle Ford in-basin new entrant after speaking with a company representative about the project. 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. If you …

This morning we lived blogged the Hi Crush conference call providing Infill Thinking visitors with a real-time bullet point list of takeaways. With the call ended, the live blog is done and here are our final notes from the call: There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …

A couple weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit the construction site of Preferred Sands Monahans Frac Sand Plant. We met with the company’s president and the Monahans plant manager to learn the latest about this regional sand producer’s plans for West Texas. Here are the key takeaways from …

Last week, first Schlumberger and then Halliburton issued US onshore profit warnings for their completions businesses. Halliburton explicitly cited the frac sand supply crunch caused by railroad downtime as the primary culprit. Since then, we’ve had a chance to catch up with multiple private participants in this market to try …

In this weekly rig and frac spread count update we take a close look at Canadian drilling trends. 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. If you are new to …

This week at an investor conference, Smart Sand discussed their latest thoughts on building an in-basin plant in the Permian. 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. If you are …

We don’t always post links to press releases, but this deal may not be on everyone’s radar just yet… and it should be, so we are sharing it here…   There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

The guar shortage five years ago provides a useful framework for thinking about the latest completions supply chain crisis.   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. If you are new …

Last week, we visited the construction site of Badger Mining Corporation’s new Permian Basin frac sand plant. We toured the location with project manager Dan Koxlien to get a feel for the company’s timeline and future plans. We learned some interesting new details about plant size, last mile logistics, rail potential, coating …

When back in West Texas, we always make time to drive slowly up and down the I-20 frontage roads between Midland and Odessa. You’ve gotta keep your head on a swivel to avoid the oncoming traffic using the frequent on/off ramps. But you never know what you might see in …

We examine the news of a second Eagle Ford frac sand mine, the second this week and it’s only Tuesday. 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. If you are …

In our weekly rig and frac spread count update this week, we parse through a land driller’s  2018 rig upgrade program to delineate some critical 2018 onshore drilling market trends. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

We met with Black Mountain’s management team on location in the Permian Basin last week. During our mine tour, we learned exclusive details about the company’s recent operational performance and new objectives for 2018/2019. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this …

Here’s what you need to know about the latest frac sand mine. Is this news the beginning of more E&Ps vertically integrating in-basin sand with either purchases of in-basin mines or raw acreage upon which to build? There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  …

Check out what Patterson-UTI management said about local sand usage last 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. If you are new to Infill Thinking, or your membership has …

The very latest on what the 5th largest pressure pumping company in the US is doing to their fleet to try and capitalize on a hot market. The strategy doesn’t involve newbuilds, but it does include some interesting tweaks. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the …

In addition to taking it all in from the West Texas roads this week, we’ve met with management at four in-basin sand mines, two OFS firms, and a regional transportation alliance. We also hosted a well-attended reader meetup in Odessa yesterday and have two more frac sand mine visits behind …

We break down Pioneer’s Permian news from yesterday evening. 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. If you are new to Infill Thinking, or your membership has expired, please email …

Exclusive details about the Brady plant closing and what’s next for its owner. Hint, everything on wheels is headed to the Permian… 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. If …