Posted on 09/20/2016 7:31:04 AM PDT by bananaman22
“Right now, it’s all about the frack sand. The story of US shale resilience is now about huge quantities of high-quality frack sand. This is the backbone of the comeback.”
Welcome to the Mega-Frack
Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting highly pressurized water into a well and then pouring sand into it in order to keep the tiny fractures created by the water blast open, and then widening them so that more crude oozes from the shale rock.
The US response to the oil price war has been the ‘mega frack’, which means that producers are creating more fractures in rock because the more source rock that is fracked, the more oil and gas they’ll get out of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
They will predict that by 2050 the world will have exhausted the supply of sand.
Oh the Huge Manatees.
it is perhaps ironic that the dessert Kingdom should find sand its new enemy
fascinating, great post
There's already a full-length documentary on the subject.
Shout out to the House of Saud!
All of you Saudi princes had better keep a bug-out bag with you at all times. It is becoming obvious that OPEC can no longer control the price of oil and, consequently, you can no longer buy off the citizens with generous welfare. This means that the clock is ticking down to the day that they come for your so-called government which is nothing more than a family business. Once Venezuela’s crooked government falls and the new government gets oil production back on track the price of oil is going to take a real hit and that is when the wheels will come off of your petro-state.
Try to learn a trade because the new government of the country which will no longer have the word “Saudi” in it will be hunting your assets world-wide. This means that you petro-pirate-princes will have to work for a living
I am looking forward to enjoying the feeling of Schadenfreude.
I recall reading in the mid-’70s (in Time Magazine, no less) that the US had approximately 4 times the Saudi reserves in the form of shale oil. The problem (then) was that it cost about $30/bbl. to extract it, and the price of conventional oil was then about $15/bbl (this was after the ‘73 Mideast War, but before the Iranian revolution).
Now, of course, it still costs about $30/bbl to extract it - but conventional oil costs about $50/bbl. Further, Fracking 2.0 will, in another couple of years, bring the price of extraction of shale oil down to somewhere between $5 and $20/bbl. http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/01/technological-progress-in-big-data.html
Oh, and we have about many more than 4 times the Saudi reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves The 4 largest shale oil deposits are in the US, totaling over 2 trillion bbls (Saudi reserves are in the neighborhood of 250 billion bbls.). “In Place” shale oil reserves are about 3.7 trillion bbls. for the U.S. alone. We’re damned near floating on an ocean of oil - THERE IS NO SHORTAGE!!!
We should OWN the oil market. We should have one of the lowest costs of doing business in this country, mainly based on cheap and plentiful oil. Under President Trump, we WILL have these things.
“it is perhaps ironic that the dessert Kingdom should find sand its new enemy”
A bit off topic but.....
A neighbor of mine spent many years working in Saudi Arabia during the 70’s.
One of the tidbits he brought back was that the Saudi’s were IMPORTING sand to use in their building projects because the local sand was useless in a concrete mix.
He brought back a small bottle of sand and showed me a bit under a microscope.
That sand was smoother than glass beads!
Then he explained about the frequent sand storms and I realised the constant friction polished each grain of sand into smooth little beads.
Entire countries made up of mostly worthless sand.
Oh, one more thing. In the last 40 or so years since the OPEC oil embargo, we have drastically improved the efficiency of our energy usage. Our homes and offices waste less, due to much better insulation and much more efficient A/C and heating units; our automobiles are vastly more efficient (my 2015 Impala is faster - and not be a little - than my 1969 Pontiac GTO, but gets literally twice the mileage...plus it handles better, brakes faster, won’t rust out, etc.); our trucks and trains are far more efficient; our factories are far more efficient; our lighting - everywhere - is vastly more efficient. The point of all of this is that we not only have FAR more oil (not to mention coal, natural gas and nuclear) than we thought years ago, but we’re using it much more efficiently. This is a fantastic resource, and we should be EXPORTING tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of it each year.
Saudenfreude.
I am so old that I remember the days when plastic beads and crushed walnut shells were used as proppants!
I get it. It took me a moment to see what you did. I thought you were spell checking me. Good one.
They’ll go back to being desert Bedouins.
*** “They’ll go back to being desert Bedouins” ***
Hardly ... they are ill equipped for anything other than being pampered, they will lash out with whatever they have left. Many will die and the US blamed by the UN
Mark my words
We NEED Donald Trump to shitcan effen PC Speech and Speak and Explain and not be Cowed into a Corner by weaklings
I still hope that the UN GETS OUT OF THE US and the US GETS OUT OF THE UN and they can take Obama with them.
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