Joel Schneyer, managing director at Capstone Headwaters in Denver, presented at the IQ Hub North American Shale Water Conference in Houston. Schneyer noted that:
• As the industry has graduated to oil and gas manufacturing, the focus has shifted to process management and cost control.
• The reuse of frac water to preserve and protect limited fresh water supplies has had a domino effect of forcing the adoption of less viscous, slick water fracs, inferior quality finer grained sand, which is locally available and cheaper, at the expense of more distant, more expensive, coarser grained, Northern White Sand that displays higher conductivity.
• A look at recent seismic activity near Pecos, Texas, strongly suggests that oilfield saltwater disposal may be challenged going forward to keep pace with wellfield injection rates on southwest side of the Permian Basin (i.e. the Delaware Basin).
• The industry needs to think outside the box for dealing with the increasing volumes of saltwater that needs a home.
• The Ecovap, low energy, solar evaporation suite might be one of a number of new solutions to consider as alternative to deep well injection.
Schneyer also presented at the North American Frac Sand Conference & Exhibition in Houston. The main discussion points of his presentation were:
• The tsunami of regional sand mine buildouts has created a massive overhang of sand supply.
• A look at well completion science that strongly suggests higher conductive proppants allow more hydrocarbons to be produced which results in higher EURs.
• The sourcing of frac sand from local mines and eliminating rail and trans-loading points in the supply chain was a major driver to reduce proppant and well completion costs. But cost reduction does not always directly correlate with economic returns. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
Schneyer can be reached at [email protected].