Fewer completions sandbag proppant demand: Service providers expect demand to stabilize mid-year

摘要

Although sand use per well is up sequentially, total industry sand use is down 40% to 50% in regional markets, reflecting the current decline in the volume of well completions. Service providers expect demand for sand, which has become an integral component in high-intensity completions, to stabilize by mid-year and remain flat for the balance of 2015, according to participants in Hart Energy's Heard in the Field market intelligence project. One reason for stabilization in sand use is that operators appear to be settling on completion designs in the current low-price environment with fewer tweaks to downhole techniques. Over the last two years operators have steadily increased the volume of proppant per lateral foot. This has led to uplifts in production in areas such as the Delaware Basin in Texas and New Mexico, the Eagle Ford Shale, and the Cana Woodford/SCOOP area of the Midcontinent. Similarly, the advent of high-volume slickwater fracks in the Bakken has altered completion techniques and increased demand for bulk commodity sand on a per-well basis. In isolated situations, operators are pumping up to 15 million lb of sand down a single extended lateral, or the equivalent of a 100-car train-load of sand.