Epic quantities of frac sand and water will fracture a lot of low permeability rock in the Lower 48 this year. This same sand and water has also fractured the US oilfield supply chain. Conventional wisdom on market segmentation and task ownership is now being challenged. The chain of custody …
Read More »Mapping The Mid-Con – STACK/SCOOP Frac Sand Site Locations [PDF Download]
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… Login to see the full update… To read this update and …
Read More »10 Talking Points Sure To Surface Over Coffee & Cocktails In Fort Worth This Week
Many of our subscribers have descended upon Fort Worth this week for the large Permian Basin executive confab going on there. We’ve prepared the following “cheat sheet” of talking points in advance of the event. We tried to go a layer deeper than the agenda in this exercise, focusing on …
Read More »Making A Mountain Out Of A Molehill? Permian Producers Downplay Pipeline Impact On Their Completion Programs
With the Midland crude basis differential widening to as much as $15/bbl, we’ve received inbound questions from quite a few supply chain subscribers (and Bloomberg News too) asking about the impact on oilfield service activity and logistics. Here is an executive summary of the Permian producers’ view, our view, and …
Read More »Automatize Takes An “Airbnb” Style Approach To Last Mile Logistics [Silica Valley Series]
This is the third installment in our Silica Valley Series which shines the spotlight on an increasingly critical part of the frac value chain: new software solutions in the last mile. A crop of new entrants are improving the frac sand industry’s “mind-muscle connection” on the highways from origin to …
Read More »The New Face Of Frac Sand? Permian Startups Take The House Floor In Austin [Testimony Recap]
Last Wednesday, Hayden Gillespie (Chief Commercial Officer of Black Mountain Sand) and Bud Brigham (Chairman of Atlas Sand) testified in front of the Texas House Of Representatives Energy Committee. If you missed their testimony, no worries took it in and recapped the highlights here. Some interesting market intel and perspective on …
Read More »PropX: 6,000 Boxes And Counting
PropX is growing and they are growing fast. In this update, read exclusive details we learned in a recent meeting with management about the company’s build cadence, trends in box per crew, business model, adoption rates, and the impacts of steel tariffs and OSHA regs. There’s a lot more to …
Read More »If Not Rail, Then Barge. Unanticipated Logistics Havoc Is Plaguing 2018 Completions More Than Anticipated Trucking Issues
Everyone’s been focused on trucking in Texas. And trucking in Texas is tight. But it’s the devil you don’t know that’ll get you. And during the first half of 2018, unanticipated disruptions in transportation modes not involving wheels have wreaked much more havoc in the shale frac sand transportation network. …
Read More »Sand Tiger Is Taming The Last Mile Beast One Truckload At A Time [Silica Valley Series]
In the Silica Valley Series introduction, we noted that commercialization models vary pretty widely in the digital last mile space. Sand Tiger, the second software in our series, is quite a bit different from most in that it was built and developed by a trucking operations company with no intention to monetize …
Read More »Silica Valley – Software Startups Are Racing To Digitalize The Last Mile
When the term “new entrants” is mentioned in frac sand conversation, the focus immediately gravitates to the physical. New sand producers, new plants, new well-site storage containers, and new trailer fleets have been all the rage lately. Hardware gets the headlines, but new software solutions have swept in too. A …
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