Frac Sand Weekly News Digest

The US Drilling & Completion Outlook offers unique insight into 7 Lower 48 shale plays and is an essential product for strategic planning, commercial executives, and finance professionals.

Now it’s time to turn our eyes ahead to 2Q21, and we look forward to starting to do that this week at the in-person frac sand conference in Houston hosted by the Petroleum Connection.

The number of wells drilled worldwide is expected to grow by 12 percent to 54,000 wells this year, compared with 46,000 wells last year. While drilling will fall short of the 73,000 wells drilled in 2019, it’s a “healthy recovery,” according to Rystad, a Norwegian energy research firm. However, oil and gas production growth will not be driven by U.S. shale as it had been over the past decade, Rystad said.

Ever since local sand became a thing, the NWS old guard has pushed the quality argument. The argument has some validity to it, as even local sand mine owners will acknowledge (see Liberty’s latest salvo in the debate).

"The chief finding is that by adding 5 to 10% of ceramic proppant by volume as a tail-in or lead-in, the operator can expect to boost initial 180-day production output by 5 to 9% vs. an all-sand fracture design."