Frac Sand Demand Continues to Go Up According to the Wall Street Journal, due to the enormous increase in the demand for sand, PacWest Consulting Partners expects frackers to use nearly 95 billion pounds of sand this year, up 30 percent since 2013. This projection, made by the energy-consulting firm just one year ago, is a 50-percent increase to its original estimate.
Since many energy companies have adopted the process of fracking in their oil field operations, they have come to rely on sand as an integral component to this procedure.
In fracking, sand can be used as a “proppant.” Once the shale rock formations are injected with water and chemicals, it is the proppant (normally treated sand) that keeps the newly formed cracks open after they are made in the rock. This allows the natural gas or crude oil to be extracted more easily.
A recent article from Shale Plays Media highlights that just a year ago oil field fracking operations used around 2,500 tons of sand, whereas today the new fracking techniques call for as much as 8,000 tons of sand to be pumped into a well. (That’s 75 to 100 railcars of sand per well!) The article goes on to explain that this “frac sand” is normally high-purity quartz that can withstand between 6,000 and 14,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.