The U.S. shale industry consumed an estimated 112 million tons of proppant in 2022. Transporting that volume required more than 4.5 million truckloads, and is equivalent to the gross weight of 472 of the largest cruise ships ever built. Assuming every one of those truck and trailer combinations spanned an average of 50 feet, lining them up from bumper to bumper would stretch that convoy some 42,600 miles, or from Midland to Anchorage, Ak., 11 times over.
That is a lot of trucks and an incredible amount of fracturing sand. In a business environment in which operators increasingly focus on environmental, social and governance initiatives, proppant and proppant transport probably are not the first issues that come to mind when producers think about managing their operations’ emission footprints. However, given the scope of frac sand consumption in shale plays, the potential benefits of technologies such as “wet sand” delivery can significantly reduce emissions related to producing and transporting frac sand.
Producing frac sand requires a washing process to remove impurities, and historically, it has required a drying process to allow for effective transportation and on-site metering. The ability to use wet sand eliminates the need for drying, and all the emissions associated with that process.
If all 112 million tons of sand the industry delivered to a frac blender last year had been dried using efficient natural-gas-powered drying systems, it would have consumed about 39 billion cubic feet of gas. Even with clean-burning gas, that translates to an estimated 1.43 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That is the equivalent of nearly 176,000 homes’ total annual energy demand, or 3.2 million barrels of oil, which equates to more than 300,000 cars on the road for a year. To what end? The dried sand simply was mixed with water again once it arrived on a frac location.