Resumen de What the future holds for US proppants

Industrial Minerals

• Frac sand is typically divided into two types: white sand and brown sand. White sand, the stronger of the two, is typically sourced from the St Peter's Sandstone in Ottawa, Illinois, while brown sand is sourced from the Hickory Sandstone near Brady, Texas. Frac sand is typically used in environments below 6,000 psi.

  The most notable driver impacting demand is increased proppant loadings, specifically, larger volumes of proppant placed per frac stage. The trend of using larger volumes of finer mesh materials, such as 100 mesh sand and 40/70 sand and ceramics, either on their own or in conjunction with coarser and more conductive proppant tail-ins, continues.

  Table 1, which is taken from the CSUG report, summarises the estimate of Canada's potentially marketable natural gas resources by type, province and geologic formation. A more recent study by the EIA in 2013 examines areas not addressed in the CSUG report and places Canada's technically recoverable shale gas resources at 573 tcf, or 1.7 times CSUG's upper range estimate for shale gas. The EIA also estimates that Canada has 8.8bn bbls of technically recoverable shale oil.