The Unbelievable Amount Of Frac Sand Consumed By U.S. Shale Oil Industry
The U.S. Shale Oil Industry utilizes a stunning amount of equipment and consumes a massive amount of materials to produce more than half of the country’s oil production. One of the vital materials used in the production of shale oil is frac sand. The amount of frac sand used in the shale oil business has skyrocketed by more than 10 times since the industry took off in 2007.
According to the data by Rockproducts.com and IHS Markit, frac sand consumption by the U.S. shale oil and gas industry increased from 10 billion pounds a year in 2007 to over 120 billion pounds in 2017. This year, frac sand consumption is forecasted to climb to over 135 billion pounds, with the country’s largest shale field, the Permian, accounting for 37% of the total at 50 billion pounds.
Now, 50 billion pounds of frac sand in the Permian is an enormous amount when we compare it to the total 10 billion pounds consumed by the entire shale oil and gas industry in 2007.
To get an idea of the U.S. top shale oil fields, here is a chart from my recent video, The U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme Explained:
(charts courtesy of the EIA – U.S. Energy Information Agency)
As we can see in the graph above, the Permian Region is the largest shale oil field in the United States with over 3 million barrels per day (mbd) of production compared to 1.7 mbd in the Eagle Ford, 1.2 mbd at the Bakken and nearly 600,000 barrels per day in the Niobrara. However, only about 2 mbd of the Permian’s total production is from horizontal shale oil fracking. The remainder is from conventional oil production.
Now, to produce shale oil or gas, the shale drillers pump down the horizontal oil well a mixture of water, frac sand, and chemicals to release the oil and gas. You can see this process in the video below (example used for shale gas extraction):
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