West Texas Sand Currently Bringing in Billions

[thackney]

West Texas Sand Currently Bringing in Billions
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/west_texas_sand_currently_bringing_in_billions-10-jul-2018-156242-article/
July 10, 2018

 Standing high on top of a windswept dune in the West Texas plains, Greg Edwards stares out into a vast ocean of sand. It stretches in every direction, interrupted only by an occasional strip of asphalt or clusters of silos that rise high into the sky.

Edwards runs a frack-sand mine. And those silos mark the presence of his rivals, who suddenly seem to be popping up everywhere. As he turns 360 degrees under the blistering midday sun, he calls out their names one by one: “Badger ... Atlas ... High Roller ... Alpine ... Black Mountain ... Covia.”

Twelve months ago, none of them existed -- not even the mine owned by Edwards’s employer, Hi-Crush Partners. It was the first of its kind here in West Texas. Day one was July 31, 2017. Ten others immediately followed. And another 10 or so are now hustling to get started.

Together, they will mine and ship some 22 million tons of sand this year to shale drillers all around them in the Permian Basin, the hottest oil patch on Earth. It is a staggering sum of sand, equal to almost a quarter of total U.S. supply. And within a couple years, industry experts say, the figure could climb to over 50 million tons....

[WarmPotato]

Damn! The more you know!

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Being West Texas, I suspect water is even more valuable than sand.

[thackney]

Being West Texas, I suspect water is even more valuable than sand.

There are some solutions available for the water.

Fracking without Freshwater at a West Texas Oilfield
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-without-freshwater-at-a-texas-oilfield/

...In Irion County, where Apache is drilling dozens of Wolfcamp shale wells in the Permian Basin, the company is meeting its water needs for hydraulic fracturing by using brackish water from the Santa Rosa aquifer and recycling water from wells and fracking using chemicals.

The company's approach could have broader significance for areas prone to drought. Apache, which has the most rigs running in the Permian, the oil-rich region that spans 59 Texas counties, says the model can cut costs and truck traffic rattling small towns stretched by the country's drilling boom.

"We're not using freshwater out here," Lucian Wray, production manager for Apache's South Permian region, said of the company's Barnhart operating area, which is run out of a former hunting lodge. "We are recycling 100 percent of our produced water. We don't dispose of any of it."...