Frac sand
Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 1:48 pm
I am working on Laredo Petroleum today. I just want to share with you an example of the comments that I am seeing from most of the upstream companies that I follow.
"A component of Laredo's completion optimization testing is assessing the productivity and economics of higher proppant concentrations. Utilizing the Company's proprietary models to optimize proppant density and completion design led to internal predictions of production uplift of approximately 50% above type curve. Laredo quickly moved to implement the modeled designs in the field. Currently, the Company has completed 13 wells utilizing a combination of tests of tighter perf cluster spacing, precise landing point selection, sand size, well density, and managed flowback, in concert with increased proppant density of 2,400 pounds of proppant per lateral foot. This group of wells is currently outperforming Laredo's Upper and Middle Wolfcamp type curve by approximately 46%. The Company is very encouraged by these results and will continue to evaluate the economics of these variables coupled with higher proppant density."
Companies are getting better results by using more frac sand. Frac sand demand may level off from the spike in demand we saw in Q1 and Q2, but I do not see evidence that frac sand demand is going down. Other than predictions, I do not see any hard evidence of lower proppant usage.
"A component of Laredo's completion optimization testing is assessing the productivity and economics of higher proppant concentrations. Utilizing the Company's proprietary models to optimize proppant density and completion design led to internal predictions of production uplift of approximately 50% above type curve. Laredo quickly moved to implement the modeled designs in the field. Currently, the Company has completed 13 wells utilizing a combination of tests of tighter perf cluster spacing, precise landing point selection, sand size, well density, and managed flowback, in concert with increased proppant density of 2,400 pounds of proppant per lateral foot. This group of wells is currently outperforming Laredo's Upper and Middle Wolfcamp type curve by approximately 46%. The Company is very encouraged by these results and will continue to evaluate the economics of these variables coupled with higher proppant density."
Companies are getting better results by using more frac sand. Frac sand demand may level off from the spike in demand we saw in Q1 and Q2, but I do not see evidence that frac sand demand is going down. Other than predictions, I do not see any hard evidence of lower proppant usage.