Key frac ingredients moving in different directions

摘要

The dialing in of optimal completion designs by operators is keeping sand and water providers busy right-sizing their logistical response. With investor pressure sidelining ceramic and other fancy proppant and alternative carrier media like CO_2 still but pipe dreams, sand and water will remain indispensable hydraulic fracturing ingredients for the foreseeable future. Those immediate futures, however, are on markedly different trajectories, with the former fretting over too many players and shaky demand prospects and the latter emerging as the newest darling of an otherwise tightfisted equity market.