Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve
The conversation about frac sand this year has largely revolved around access to it. Topics of debate have fallen into three buckets: i) inflation, ii) logistics, and iii) whether the mines will be able to meet (or overshoot) the rising call on supply.
But skyrocketing sand pumped per well has an adverse impact on oilfield iron too. Thickening sand slurry is highly abrasive and chews up the steel transporting it.
As the US activity recovery matures, we expect the depreciating impact of greater sand intensity on surface equipment to become a critical topic of conversation. This has the potential to create another bottleneck and become another source of inflation across the oilfield value chain as frac’ers ramp capex to keep spreads up and running.
In our Thinking Aloud forum today, we shared what to watch for and some of the things we are already hearing from the field on this emerging topic. We’d like to hear from you on this too. As a reminder, your subscription unlocks participation rights in our exclusive forum. This discussion is entirely behind our paywall. It is a safe place for industry decision makers to collaborate (what you say here will not show up on Google for every Joe Blow with a browser to see). Only other subscribers have access, and that means you have some very good company here – our readers are serious O&G folks only.
