Posted on July 1, 2019
With competition in Texas and Oklahoma growing and taking more business, the frac sand industry in Wisconsin is struggling, and, Kent Syverson, says he believes the state’s frac sand boom is over, the StarTribune reports. Superior Silica Sands has idled three of its sand mines, and Hi-Crush is discontinuing production at its Augusta mine.
According to the news agency, Kent Syverson, a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, says he believes the frac sand boom in Wisconsin is over, because the frac sand mines that have been built close to the oilfields in Texas and Oklahoma have lowered prices by eliminating the cost of shipping it from Wisconsin.
“The capital has already been invested in Wisconsin, so the real questions are how much of this sand will still be needed and how many of these higher-cost operations that are taken off line will never come back,” Syverson says, according to the news outlet. “Wisconsin sand is still the Cadillac of all sands, but these companies in the Permian Basin are saying they can make more money driving a Chevy than a Cadillac. It’s all a cost-benefit analysis.”
However, Ryan Carbrey of Houston-based energy research firm Rystad Energy notes that major shale energy deposits in North Dakota and Pennsylvania will still rely on northern white sand. “In those regions, there’s not really much good local sand,” he says, according to the news agency.
Source: aggman.com
