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Welcome to Energy 101 with Julie McLelland and Jacob Stiller. Join us on our mission to help raise the world's energy IQ.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;18
Unknown
Welcome to energy 101. Today we have Josh and Curtis all the way from Eco Reach Base here in Houston. We are. Yes okay, so I said all the way all the way from down the street down the Beltway. Today we have a long awaited, sand episode. I know sand, it's like, you know, big work, but I've been saying it.
00;00;19;18 - 00;00;46;20
Unknown
I've been going out on sites. I hear about it all the time. The word prophet, I'm like, what's the big deal? Who cares about all this? But it's a it's a huge fraction. And part of, these drilling operations, especially with fracking, from my understanding. And, let's kind of get the overview real quick. So, you know, I've gone on these sites and there's these, like literal pyramids of dumped sand everywhere, and supposedly it's going down the whole, like, why?
00;00;46;20 - 00;01;19;18
Unknown
What is it being used for? What's going on there. Yeah. So sand has been historically utilized and in the oil and gas industry and hydraulic fracturing. So we'll start with what is hydraulic fracturing. So hydraulic fracturing is simply using a profit laden fluid to physically open the fissures, the natural fissures in the formation. Now once you've cracked those open, then you need something to fill those voids.
00;01;19;20 - 00;01;45;15
Unknown
And historically in our industry, we've utilized sand to do that. And then once the pressure is released, the fracture closes, and then you got the sand opening those up and giving you a pathway for the hydrocarbon to be released into the wellbore. That makes a lot of sense from the dozens of infographics and animations I've seen of how that works.
00;01;45;15 - 00;02;11;16
Unknown
Yeah. So obviously the hydrocarbons can go through the sand, right? Because I guess that's where the word permeability and all that mobility. So so what you're trying to do is take a very low permeable, permeable, formation and increase its permeability. So it allows the hydrocarbons, the gas, the oil, the water's, the flow through that without restriction. Right.
00;02;11;16 - 00;02;31;00
Unknown
Or less restriction. Yeah. Does that like kind of have it the analogy of like a sponge, like a sponge gets so soaked you eventually have to squeeze it out like that. You need a certain kind of product quality of sand where it can constantly go through it, a yes and no. So it's kind of like looking at a river.
00;02;31;05 - 00;03;11;01
Unknown
Okay. So if you look at the Brazos River, Brazos River flows really great. Okay. But if we get a drought, the river dries up or if you look at the river as your primary frack network. All right, the what feeds the river tributaries. So the tributaries are blocked. Okay, then you can't feed the river. So what? We're doing is we're opening those tributaries within the formation to allow the hydrocarbon to flow into the primary frag network.
00;03;11;04 - 00;03;38;28
Unknown
So does it flow through the sand? Yes and no. So what happens is the sand. Once the formation closes down on the sand, it leaves a pathway for the hydrocarbons to come through. Right. That's what the term prophet, you know, comes from a year ago when superior purchased, acreage. I wasn't and I didn't grow up in the frack world, so I had to go understand what that was.
00;03;38;28 - 00;03;57;05
Unknown
As well. And it makes sense when we're talking about the fissures and propping open, you know, whatever material that is and there's better and different types of materials to do that. But that's, we'll talk about that more about the advantage of eco reach later, about how that problem works. Right. And yeah, of course, the word prop ent is basically the word sand.
00;03;57;12 - 00;04;17;27
Unknown
It is basically okay, cool. So yeah, you're talking about this kind of being around for a while, but it's associated with fracking. When I think of fracking I think it's kind of more modern. I understand that, like maybe throwing dynamite down a hole 100 years ago was considered fracking, but like, how far? How like, when did the first person, like, put sand into a crack in?
00;04;18;00 - 00;04;48;25
Unknown
You guys out go back to 19 to the mid 30s. Really. Okay. In Kansas. And they did what they call river Frax. And they basically pulled sand out of the river and mixed it up and put a gel component with it to suspend it, and they pumped it in the oil. Wow. Okay. Now through this industry, we've utilized a variety of different things to stimulate a wellbore.
00;04;48;28 - 00;05;25;29
Unknown
Okay. We've used gasoline. We looked at nuclear devices. We didn't use them. Okay. Dynamite perforating guns, you know, so there's a lot of things that we've looked at in this industry to to enhance the recovery of the hydrocarbon, but the one that's kind of lends itself best was a physical profit. Okay. And that historically has been sand.
00;05;26;02 - 00;05;59;10
Unknown
Now we've also through some innovations in this industry. We've looked at synthetics, you know, manmade problems, you know, ceramics box sides, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Sand is very angular. Some of these synthetic properties are spherical. So sparkles better than angular. But, you know, we also work in an industry that is very cost conscious and synthetic provenance can be very costly.
00;05;59;13 - 00;06;21;18
Unknown
So that's why they don't use them. And, and large concrete volume. Yes. Yeah. Right. This kind of like opens up the whole idea of what I called the sand economy. Right. Like sand is just something no one thinks about or things there's like abundance of. Right. You compare like how do you describe a word a number with 100 zeros at the end?
00;06;21;18 - 00;06;52;07
Unknown
It's like wall to sand grains in the world or like water droplets. Right. But when you talk oil and gas, there's actually like a worry if there is enough sand, I hear at least. And it's true. So let's look at the amounts of sand that they're using on a typical horizontal. Well, today it's somewhere in the region between 35 and 50 million pounds of sand per well, okay.
00;06;52;13 - 00;07;23;03
Unknown
And there's hundreds of wells drilled. Is that sand? Stay underground. Stays underground. Is that what's the what's the fracture closes. It traps the sand. Okay, so you're filling a massive volume in there. Okay. But 100 million pounds of sand logistically moving that at 50,000 pounds per truck. It's a lot of trucks, right. And a lot of time and a lot of money.
00;07;23;05 - 00;07;52;04
Unknown
Now, you know, back in the old days when I was still running frack jobs, right. We used to rail sand into the Permian and other parts of the United States. And, so the rail costs got prohibitive based on the volumes in which we were utilizing now. So they went to local mines. So, Kermit, Texas, Andrews, you know, a lot of those places.
00;07;52;04 - 00;08;25;14
Unknown
So they're mining it in the Permian, in the Delaware and getting it closer to these locations. Well, there's just so much there. Right? So they're starting to get to a point now where that source of sand is, is diminishing. Not saying we're running out, but it's diminishing. Right. So it's not going to be there forever. So we got to look at, you know, we're either logistically going to move it from somewhere else or we're going to put it, an alternative source in the ground.
00;08;25;22 - 00;08;47;22
Unknown
Yeah. And sand is, a commodity at the end of the day, like people and industries want it for other reasons to. Sure. Oil and gas might top off like the the biggest one. Yes is no. Oil and gas is probably a very small percentage of user. Really who else is using it? All your segmentation is X. Yeah.
00;08;47;22 - 00;09;23;02
Unknown
So the so the the there's two products that are consumed greater than anything else water and cement. Concrete okay. We there's concrete everywhere right. We see it every day. Well concrete is Portland cement some aggregates you know, limestone whatever aggregate. But sand is a big part of that mixture. Right. So yeah, there's a there's a massive market for sand.
00;09;23;07 - 00;09;44;10
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. There's even like the vanity reasons of it. I went to Barcelona a few years ago and I learned their beach. They didn't have a beach, basically, like the city hit the water and like it was rocks. I think they, like, went to Egypt or whatever and, like, literally made a beach. And today that all that sand is not naturally there.
00;09;44;13 - 00;10;02;11
Unknown
So it's just it's just one of those, again, mundane products that are technically part of everyday life, from cement to your beach. Yeah. I mean, it's like going to the beaches for shit out of Dubai and they're they're mining back sand out of the oceans and make an island out of it and build the cities on it.
00;10;02;13 - 00;10;23;14
Unknown
So yeah, it's it's pretty wide, pretty widely utilized commodity the sand in the ground. Right. Yeah. Right. So like, y'all want sand, but some people don't want sand. So they kind of like they mined it out the ground because they're trying to get to something underneath it. And then they able to sell that off like is that part of the economy we're talking here?
00;10;23;17 - 00;10;50;24
Unknown
No, there's not really any mineral mining in in the Permian Basin. What about like Australia or like somewhere where it's more common? Yeah, maybe. But, you know, where does sand come from? Okay. It's just rocks is sedimentary. Okay? It's a sedimentary product, but it's silica, which is just volcanic glass in some cases. But for the most part, it's just sediment.
00;10;50;26 - 00;11;14;20
Unknown
Okay. It was millions of years ago. This was an ocean, right? And those fine particles settled and they settled in different regions of the world. Right. I mean, the Sahara Desert, you know, we get a lot of the Sahara Desert in Houston right here. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. The way it blows over is. Yeah. So people are like, oh, man, we're getting all this dirt dust, you know.
00;11;14;20 - 00;11;39;26
Unknown
Well, it's it's beneficial for the, for the, for the eco, environment, you know, because if you don't have that within that, there's a lot of minerals and particles and things that feed a lot of things that are, you know, so we don't have to see her dust, then, you know, we get in trouble, right? Yeah. I've seen stuff like that benefits plants and wildlife and everything.
00;11;39;28 - 00;12;01;27
Unknown
So sticking with whatever, I was just trying to make up there. Yeah. Y'all need. There is sand in the ground. It kind of reminds me of this idea that, I learned recently that some, like, drilling rigs, you know, they'll they'll they'll have their own gas fuel, their own drilling site. Right. There's a name for that.
00;12;01;27 - 00;12;22;27
Unknown
But what about sand? Is there are there drilling sites that are drilling sand nearby and then using it for their own frack? No. Is that an idea or not? No. Because is not the right kind of sand, right? Right. So the stuff that is being mined in the Permian now, 20 years ago wasn't the right kind of sand.
00;12;23;02 - 00;12;52;28
Unknown
Okay, okay. Because we were raising it from Wyoming and by the older white sand from Wyoming. Right. Or they wanted 2040 or they, you know, 2040 is the sizing of sand. So sands have different grain sizes, right? So 30, 50, 20, 40, 100 mesh, you know, 200 mesh. And the industry now has trended itself to using smaller sand sizes.
00;12;53;00 - 00;13;20;11
Unknown
Right. So the stuff that we get from the from say, Kerman or any place in the Permian is typically 140 to 100 mash in its size. Right? It's kind of like it's not as fine as is what you would see in a hotel lobby in an ashtray. Well, you know, see an ashtray in a hotel lobby anymore. But back in the day, he used to say these little ashtrays with white sand in it.
00;13;20;11 - 00;13;55;25
Unknown
Right. Well, that was 100 mesh Ottawa sand, but we don't use that anymore. Now, why don't we use that? Because we had to rail it down here. So to avoid that rail cost we said wall or sand right here. Let's use that. So we just started digging that up right? I mean there's been you know, there's been, discussions about using the sand over in Monahans and the and, you know, that's a that's a federal, park or is it a national state park?
00;13;55;25 - 00;14;15;19
Unknown
Yeah, it's a state park, you know, and they're like, you're not doing that, you know? Yeah, they're in the sand now. But, you know, we, in the interests of logistics, they built a conveyor belt, right? A 30 plus mile mile conveyor belt in the Permian. Yeah. It's all sand. What's the name of it? I don't remember the name of it.
00;14;15;21 - 00;14;32;28
Unknown
Atlas is the company. I think so, yeah, but they have, like, a name for the whole thing. Really interesting. That's. It's cool concept, but, you know, at some point is going to be a landmark, right? Yeah. The hell that. Oh. Is it. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing else to look at. So. Yeah. No I West Texas beautiful place but it's.
00;14;32;29 - 00;14;55;05
Unknown
Come on they are. This is a, this is a pro West Texas office. Yeah. We have more hype than the opposite. So. But yeah, obviously we had to talk about the quality of sand. There's obviously different sand, and I'm sure there's lots of words you can use that we don't have time for, but, I mean, at the end of the day, sand is just rocks thinner and thinner over time.
00;14;55;05 - 00;15;22;06
Unknown
Right? Essentially. And sediment. Sediment. Yeah. Okay. Wrote down rock. Okay. So when you described, like manmade earlier, like, is manmade involved actually taking large sediment and making it smaller or are you talking more like other product. It's it's taking a molten product and super cooling it or cooling it down, and then it precipitates out a ceramic bead.
00;15;22;09 - 00;15;49;16
Unknown
Wow. Okay. And, there's a lot of companies out there that manufacture problems, okay. But it's an expensive process. And so, you know, fortunately, our unfortunately, we were not able to utilize those in the volumes that you would like to write sand wise, like the, the, the grains and the size you mentioned all earlier. Like is there what's like the perfect preferred one right now?
00;15;49;19 - 00;16;12;29
Unknown
Well, right now the industry is leaning more to one 4100 mesh. And like in a decade, are we still using that? Oh we already it's moving fast. We keep it down. I think we're moving more moon to smaller and smaller problem sizes, right? Yeah. Over time. And the reason for that is trying to get that profit transported farther afield in the, in the well in the formation.
00;16;12;29 - 00;16;34;03
Unknown
Right. Yeah. So are like are us or other nations like going overseas with this just to get it. Like is it worth that. Are we transporting, are you asking are we transporting sand from other parts of the world? Right. Not it because whatever knowledge. Yeah. Because that pretty much everyone has sand and it's good enough, I guess is the, the way.
00;16;34;08 - 00;16;55;18
Unknown
Yeah. I think the again you call it comes into the, in the play there. I mean you talked about trying China avoid using rail let alone what a ship would cost. So yeah, I guess I did for sure. Yeah. Right. There's a lot going on there. Well this is a great time to transition into what y'all do, because y'all aren't just one of many sand guys.
00;16;55;18 - 00;17;23;22
Unknown
Y'all are. Y'all are on the leading edge of what's going on these days. And finding the alternative instead of waiting for the finer and finer sand. From my understanding. So, what exactly is going on with acreage? Yeah. So. So we don't use sand. Okay? We use a coal combustion product that's generated from the burning of coal. And, so people would know it more commonly is fly ash.
00;17;23;25 - 00;18;02;14
Unknown
Okay. Fly ash has been utilized for decades, both in the oil and gas industry and in the civil construction market. Okay. So it's typically been utilized as an extender for simultaneous products, right. The in just the oil industry would know it is 5050 pours mix. Right? So it's 50% fly ash 50% Portland cement. Okay. So I've we have as a company have now taken fly ash and we utilize it as a physical property.
00;18;02;17 - 00;18;38;23
Unknown
Now it's much smaller than sand. It's about 325 mesh or 42 micron. So very fine okay. But it's lighter than sand. It's stronger than sand. So the crust strength for the product that we we utilize is well over 15,000 p.s.i. So it's much more robust. It's it's in comparison to ceramics. Okay. But I just told you we don't use sand but fly ash is about 67% silica.
00;18;38;25 - 00;19;06;16
Unknown
And silica is sand okay. But again what happens is they burn the coal. That flume goes to the the vent for the, the exhaust, if you will. It's encapsulated in a precipitate air and it's cooled. And as it cools, it creates a spherical ball. Okay. So it's very spiritual and stuff like these are tiny. Yeah. Super tiny.
00;19;06;16 - 00;19;38;28
Unknown
Three times smaller than. Yeah. It's about three times smaller than 100 ish. Okay. And but it's extremely strong. And that's why we use it as a physical problem. We also use is a problem because it's lighter than sand. So it's it can be somewhere between 1.7 Pacific gravity and 2.2 Pacific gravity. So it allows it to transport in the well and the formation much farther than sand us.
00;19;39;00 - 00;19;59;10
Unknown
Okay. Basically, wherever water goes, the eco reach product will travel. Yeah. We can use produced water from the well as the carrying fluid, or we can use just freshwater, whatever is available. So you'll see that there's a sample of it there on the table. I see, always like a product. That's right. We got a little, on the Prada show.
00;19;59;12 - 00;20;19;14
Unknown
Yeah. So this is fly ash. It is fly ash, and it looks insanely fine and is not the compliment it I mean, definitely I definitely don't feel like I'm playing with sand. I don't know, I've never if that was sand, it was already settled out. And it might be down the bottom. This this settles about ten times slower than sand.
00;20;19;20 - 00;20;48;18
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So you said the smaller the better, right? Yeah. Because. And let me explain why. Right. So sand that at 100 mesh size versus 325 sand won't invade the micro fractures. So you have a network of fractures and these well bores okay. Some of them are so small that the sand can't actually penetrate that they're opened up when you frack the well.
00;20;48;21 - 00;21;15;11
Unknown
But once you release the hydraulic pressure, they close back off. So much like I talked about earlier with tributaries feeding the river, those are the tributaries. So they're just closing those off. So you see these massive decline curves when you're when you're extracting the hydrocarbon, this product will actually invade those micro fractures and physically keep those micro fractures open.
00;21;15;14 - 00;21;42;14
Unknown
So we've got empirical evidence that we get longer term productivity from the well. And we're extracting more volume using this product than we typically would with sand. So we're enhancing the recovery factor of the hydrocarbon in place. Yeah that's a key factor. Today. I was sitting in with it wasn't one of the major oil and gas, companies here in Houston.
00;21;42;17 - 00;22;09;02
Unknown
I was sitting in a few months ago, and their CEO mentioned the major issue today in the industry is there's over 3 trillion barrels of oil that have that haven't been unlocked and none resource reserves in the US. So unlocking that, you know, get an A, an ability to unlock these micro fractures, pop them up and and release those hydrocarbons is it's a big deal for the industry today right.
00;22;09;04 - 00;22;26;01
Unknown
That seems to, tap into the reef fracking side of things or we'll save that for the end. But I got a few more questions about this fly ash stuff. Hence why we're here. So first off, you said you you burn it like you actually get the fresh, cold and burn it to do the whole process.
00;22;26;03 - 00;22;52;02
Unknown
No. So, so there are coal fired power plants all over North America okay. And you know a lot of people saying well we're going to convert them all to natural gas on that. Never yet I mean a lot of them converted to natural gas okay. But they're still burning coal. Yeah. And when they burn coal, something has to be done with, the byproduct of that.
00;22;52;02 - 00;23;26;18
Unknown
And the byproduct of that is fly ash. Right. Okay. And there's entire industries built on, harvesting that fly ash, utilizing it. Okay. Like I said, the cementitious market is is where it's more widely utilized than anywhere else. Okay. But it's a perfect product for us because it's spherical, it's lightweight and it's very strong. Right. So you're basically collaborating with the coal fired plants to tap in and get what you want from them.
00;23;26;18 - 00;23;53;01
Unknown
Right. So we purchase a direct from the source. We work in hand in hand with another company called Eco Materials who source about 68% of the ash production in North America. Great company, by the way. We co-developed this process with the University of Kentucky. And, they've been studying the benefits of fly ash for decades.
00;23;53;03 - 00;24;22;18
Unknown
And so we coauthored and, several patents with them. And, we continue to work with them. We've qualified over 150 sources worldwide of ash is that we, we believe are, beneficial for hydraulic fracturing. So we've got a tremendous volume of this, at our disposal. And, so we're not gonna run out of it tomorrow, right?
00;24;22;20 - 00;24;41;16
Unknown
See, I understand, like, the energy mix here in the US is tremendously cut down on coal with not even the advancement of gas and natural gas, but even oil, too. But, I mean, I'm sure I mean, I think it's down to, like, the mix is as low as, like, 10% or even lower. I don't know, definitely not as significant as it was.
00;24;41;18 - 00;25;15;19
Unknown
No it's not. And and the that industry took a lot of bashing for right and wrong reasons. Okay. The utilization of coal is, is has been diminished significantly in the U.S, you know, from just, environmental, reason, but it still exists and we're still utilizing it. But again, like I said, we've qualified over 150 sources globally so we can bring this stuff from India, China, you know, wherever.
00;25;15;19 - 00;25;43;07
Unknown
Right, right. These other countries are using it. In fact, they are opening up new ones. They are. It is a larger part of their energy mix, whether it's, more perverse regions or ones that just need the efficiency of burning coal because supposedly it's super efficient. You don't need the crazy infrastructure for go to Beijing. Yeah. Which I don't know if you've been or not, but, you know, if you go on, a real sunny day, you can't see.
00;25;43;12 - 00;26;06;20
Unknown
Wow. And a haze. All that haze is fly ash. Yeah, because they don't use the same process that we use here in the United States to capture the, the flow right now, they're changing. They are. They are doing that. And, it will make their quality much better. And, and, in Beijing and other parts of China.
00;26;06;20 - 00;26;35;08
Unknown
So, yeah, there's always a positive to what could be known as a negative. Right. Well, any, any part of the industry and there's always, you know, always figure something out. It's amazing. So I talked about like, bringing sand overseas and stuff. What she said, like, you know, it's not really something you want to avoid, but the fly ash, you know, if if we are tapping into countries that burn away more coal on scale than us, are we trying to get the fly ash overseas?
00;26;35;11 - 00;26;58;19
Unknown
We can it depends. Depends on where we're going to utilize it. Yeah. Am I going to ship it from India to North America? Probably not. But can there's there's a lot of different regions in there that, you know, it's close right. At least is obviously close. You know, there's a lot of different places that we can utilize this process.
00;26;58;19 - 00;27;17;24
Unknown
And and we are doing that. We're looking at that now. And we've done well just different countries. So if you're like getting the fly ash from India, you're going to like Kuwait for them to use it. Yeah. And not all the way back to like the Permian would be the that would be the the ideal scenario. Yeah sure.
00;27;17;27 - 00;27;38;13
Unknown
Instead of shipping it from the US right. Utilize in the Middle East we get a source closer to the Middle East. Yeah. Sounds good. I have a real dumb question. When I was, hearing about fly ash for the first time, I be like, essentially what I pictured was your picture. Like, charcoal is in a in a barbecue pit.
00;27;38;15 - 00;27;58;21
Unknown
They all get burned over and done, and you're left with a bunch of ash, and I'm like, I'm a, my thought process that just you scoop that up and you, that's you somehow know, so is there any kind of comparison to that? Well, so it's a great question. Great question at all. What charcoal is, is organic okay.
00;27;58;29 - 00;28;36;15
Unknown
It's wood. Okay. Okay. This isn't wood, it's coal. Right, right. So there's there's two different types of ash. It's not the stuff that, you know, you were made to clean out of the fireplace okay. It's it's a derivative of coal. So an organic or a bio ash, you know, is not wood work for us. Okay. A volcanic ash, in some cases is, is okay to use, but we tend to, rely on coal.
00;28;36;17 - 00;29;03;28
Unknown
Okay. And that's because it has the ceramic and it is strong. Silica is stronger and and it's more readily available. Right? Yeah. I, I did hear like, well, looking things up like this, that there are some pretty interesting things in the past that these, these services have tried using as profit. Right outside of sand or I mean, they some sound so interesting, it doesn't even make my, charcoal thing sound that ridiculous.
00;29;04;00 - 00;29;22;29
Unknown
I even heard, like, walnut shells. You mentioned ceramic balls, which sounds I think is actually nice in advance, but just too expensive. But, like, what is the scale? And some of these interesting things we've tried putting into the which we've tried, you know, this is the oil and gas industry. Yeah. We'll try any whatever works. Yeah. Whatever works.
00;29;23;06 - 00;29;50;00
Unknown
But baby powder, you know, walnut shells, baby powder. I don't know about baby powder, but. Yeah, you know, there's been still done, you know, steel balls, like ball bearings, small ball bearings, big ball bearings. Aluminum was another one that that was, looked at at one phase, you know, but it all falls back to money and sand.
00;29;50;00 - 00;30;13;13
Unknown
Steve Fleischer's cheap. Yeah. Okay. So that's what you want to use. You want, but you want something that's durable and you want something is strong. Let's talk about, like, using it on site. Right. So one of my favorite things on a drilling site is or I guess a frack site is the blender, right? And it's because it looks very funny the way it the it's very it's like satisfying.
00;30;13;13 - 00;30;36;19
Unknown
It's like this machine that's literally blending it. I mean, is this, is this not like an industrial, like margarita machine on a site? I mean, yeah, you probably say that, but, okay. How many margarita machines use alien screws to bring sand into the mix? Right. So the blenders is is not something we utilize. Okay, so we pre-planned this, okay.
00;30;36;19 - 00;30;59;13
Unknown
And we either use a, cementing unit, typical cementing yet, or we can mix it up in a mud system, you know, like the, the mud, mud pits that you would see on a drilling site. And we can utilize those. And the reason we do that is for dust. So if I tried to this is a very fine particle.
00;30;59;13 - 00;31;23;21
Unknown
So if I try to put it in the hopper of the blender, it just dust goes everywhere, right? I've tried it and worked, so I had to then invoke a different means of delivery. And so I can mix this at a very high concentration. I can feed it to the blender already mixed, and the blender can cut it to whatever concentrations they want.
00;31;23;24 - 00;31;48;02
Unknown
Or I can simply go out to a well site with a single cement unit and frack oil, because I don't need to pump this at 100 barrels a minute. I can pump it at six barrels a minute. And that's because of the rheology. Okay. The characteristics of this, it takes very little energy to move this. And it's self suspending as you can see there.
00;31;48;02 - 00;32;17;15
Unknown
And that sample is still there's still particles floating in that sample okay. And that sample has been sitting on the table for several minutes okay. Sand if you did that was sand. If you made that little flip right. There was sand. Soon as you made that flip, the sand would instantly settle out. There's this they suspended for a long time, but it takes it takes no energy or very little energy to keep this moving.
00;32;17;18 - 00;32;45;04
Unknown
So our industry would define that as a yield point okay. So some of these ashes and their characteristics have negative yield points. And if I mix this at less than a pound per gallon concentration now that's important because the industry today are utilizing 2 pound per gallon concentrations of sand. I can mix this at 8 pounds per gallon or less.
00;32;45;07 - 00;33;20;15
Unknown
It's considered a Newtonian fluid. Okay. There's another product that's considered a Newtonian fluid and that's water. So it has the same flow characteristics as water. So what we advertise is that this this flows just like water. And wherever our water goes, our product goes. And we've proven that empirically that, during our flowback, we recover about 90% of our treating fluids, that we utilize sand, they get about 30% back.
00;33;20;15 - 00;33;40;23
Unknown
So they're trapping water. And where they're trapping water is behind the profits. Okay. Out into the formation. Formation closes, it traps the water. Never see it again. Right. So we don't trap water. It sounds like a thing. You. Yeah. You don't want to trap the water, right? No. Okay. You'd like it back. Okay. We got the weeds there.
00;33;40;23 - 00;34;02;24
Unknown
But I understood most of it. So when I say it on, like, the operation, like, let's say it's time to put the product down the hole. The problem down a hole. What is what is like some of the machines and like, like and like if we're going like thousands of feet down, we're going horizontal. Like, what does that physically look like or.
00;34;02;27 - 00;34;29;29
Unknown
Well, so, we did recently did a well in Colorado, 7000ft horizontal. Well, we used to cement units and pumped it a 15 barrels minute and displace the entirety down the wellbore. We've also used it with conventional frac fleets and, and pumped it at 100 barrels minute. So we're kind of agnostic on how we get it into the wellbore.
00;34;29;29 - 00;35;01;13
Unknown
So talk about frack pressures. Okay. So I don't need to pump gas at 100 barrels minute. I just need to pump it slightly above the pressure required to open the rock of a stage just slightly above that pressure. And I'm talking 100 to 200 p.s.i above that I can place this product in the formations. Yeah. When I when it gets all the pressure stuff, that's just, you know, I think again, you know, like live it to really understand that stuff.
00;35;01;16 - 00;35;27;13
Unknown
Yeah. And on location like you were talking about that as far as what's required were very, there's not much required from us. Like you talking about a cement pump. Maybe some site, some silos, some bins. But we're much smaller footprint than you would see of a traditional. So we use less equipment. Less equipment? Yeah. Now go back to that part about frack initiation.
00;35;27;15 - 00;36;03;14
Unknown
Okay. And for people who don't understand hydraulic fracturing, you ever used a floor jack to lift your car up? Yeah. Okay. And two days ago. So when you put the floor jack underneath your car, your car weighs x, so you use hydraulic pressure to extend, the shaft on the floor, Jack. So what the floor jack is doing is it's initiating that frack because it's overcoming the burden of the car weight on that hydraulic cylinder.
00;36;03;17 - 00;36;40;27
Unknown
You can do that very slowly. Are you doing very fast? Okay, but you might flip your car over, but, so that's that's really the concept of breaking open the rock. You got to see the burden pressure, okay, hydraulically by using fluids and pumps. Because it's the same thing when you're lifting your car, you're using a fluid and a pump that handles the pump of fluids, the fluid that's in the reservoir of the jack that lifts the the cylinder that lifts the car.
00;36;40;29 - 00;37;05;14
Unknown
Same concept. You always need your analogies. On an energy, one on one episode. They're great. Some people come in here without one and I'm like, come on, guys, know your audience? Yeah. Well said. I mean, what about, like, what we're going back to, like, the timeline of, improving this, the whole private industry one. Well, who was like, the first person to think of the flash concept?
00;37;05;16 - 00;37;23;25
Unknown
You you invented this. You're the guy. You're the godfather. I don't well, I don't, I don't know if I'd use Godfather, so I come up looking at. I should have started with this. Yeah, I came up with the goofy idea, and then I surrounded myself with a whole bunch of really smart people to, prove the concept.
00;37;23;28 - 00;37;41;01
Unknown
Yeah. That's awesome. That's crazy. It's like royalty in front of me. No. Not really. You're going to be in the history books. I mean, it's just it really does feel like one of those big moments and, you know, like, someone will hopefully beat you and think of something better, right? We always want to improve and be smarter and stuff, you know, relatively how long that would be?
00;37;41;01 - 00;38;05;03
Unknown
Maybe a few decades, whatever. But, I mean, this is this is really incredible. You mentioned like, obviously like we're talking super tiny. You mentioned like angular, spherical. You mentioned crush rate. And I've wanted to kind of on see if I can, you know, talk with you all about this stuff without getting lost in the weeds. But I have an analogy of mine.
00;38;05;03 - 00;38;25;05
Unknown
So when you, when you shoot on a camera, we're surrounded by them. You, you want to set the right exposure. Right? And you don't set the exposure by just going up or down until it looks perfect. There's multiple things you can adjust. Right. So for in cameras, for example, you have something called the ISO, the shutter speed and aperture.
00;38;25;07 - 00;38;45;15
Unknown
And depending on what you would change to get the perfect, you had to get the balance at three and some they have side effects essentially one will make it like super shutter or like unnatural motion. Some of it will blow it out with brightness or not. And then of course, you can get like a lot of noise, which like the artifacts and it just doesn't look good.
00;38;45;15 - 00;39;12;15
Unknown
It looks really unprofessional. So if I were to compare that analogy to to sand and all these words, you've kind of thrown out in the last 40 minutes, what is like the triangle or how many factors do you have to balance to get the perfect prop it the perfect prop? It is really you want something that can be transported okay without a heavy and fluid and light.
00;39;12;15 - 00;39;46;08
Unknown
You know, we've we've moved away from gels. We don't use gels anymore. We use slick water, which is basically friction reducer and water. Okay. So we simplify that. And then you need something that is strong okay. Because you don't want it to crush. Now what crushes it when you release the pressure that you've invoked for the frack, when you release that pressure to the formation, naturally there's this thing called gravity, right?
00;39;46;10 - 00;40;12;06
Unknown
It's going to close down. And then if you use something that has a low crush strength, you're just going to crush it and you're you're not going to open up that porosity that you need for the hydrocarbon to flow through. So, I think the three if you go back to the camera analogy, you know, pressure, right? Concentration.
00;40;12;08 - 00;40;39;01
Unknown
Those are the three factors. So we have now change that matrix and that we can use a higher concentration with lower pressures and lower rates and still get that perfect picture. So he just like completely changed the game. We're getting there. That's the idea. And another thing is like you want it to be smaller and smaller, finer and finer.
00;40;39;01 - 00;40;56;02
Unknown
I mean we're down. Like if you have one grain of this on your hand can even see it. Like, how small is it? Right. And then you, you mentioned like when you go to the blender on site, you need to make the concentrate because it floats, it gets in the air or whatever, like right. You, you realistically you said it's like in the three hundreds.
00;40;56;02 - 00;41;24;02
Unknown
Three 2325 mesh. Yeah. What if it's like a thousand like area at the size of an atom, like I call real estate? So you have a blend there. Yeah. Okay. And I intentionally utilize a blend. So some of it's 100 mesh. Some of the bulk of it is 325 mesh. But there's some one micron particles in there. Wow okay a one micron particle you can't see microscope.
00;41;24;04 - 00;41;57;18
Unknown
That's crazy. Yeah. But in the well there are some one micron spaces in there that need to be filled. Right. And people look at that. You think about one micron how much all can get through one micron some. Wow. So you know if you're not if you're not filling all the voids okay. If you're not filling the fractures and you're not getting the benefit of, of, pulling the hydrocarbon from the oil, well, yeah, that's what those varying size of particles help us do.
00;41;57;18 - 00;42;19;03
Unknown
Like we he talked about further afield. That's a frack terminology just further out into those tributaries to unlock more of that oil and gas. Yeah, a lot, a lot of times on a show when we have on the geologists and geophysicists. Yeah, we always talk about how there's movies about outer space and the, you know, deep under the ocean.
00;42;19;03 - 00;42;36;17
Unknown
And it's like we don't get any love for like, what's going on in the subsurface. Right? Right. But y'all are y'all are in a, a world I don't even think about. Y'all are in the micro, escape world. So, like, we're like, that's a hole. And like, we've all seen those infographics of, like, the scale of things, right?
00;42;36;23 - 00;43;03;20
Unknown
Like, you start out a person, you go all the way up to galaxies, whatever. But then you go down to like atoms. And we have layers below atoms. And it's like this whole, like, crazy, like thing. You just don't think about these things. And like I said, the range is important. All sizes are important. Yeah. Like the scale is just like so hard to picture and like just looking at this and knowing that we can go smaller when it literally looks like liquid is like, yeah, I can't even process that.
00;43;03;22 - 00;43;19;29
Unknown
Yeah. Let's wrap. Let let's end it with, you know, y'all have this amazing product. We got The Godfather right in front of me. So who's using it? Is everyone switching over it? Are we we out here trying to preach and sell and go on energy one on one and let the people know? Yeah, so we're getting there.
00;43;20;02 - 00;43;45;08
Unknown
We've got some majors involved in this now that are utilizing it. We've got a lot of independents utilizing it. We've got a lot of new frax that we're doing, but we're also doing a lot of refracts. And the refract market to me is one that's underserved. And I think it's important that we go out there and we extract more hydrocarbon from the wells that are currently in the ground now.
00;43;45;12 - 00;44;14;25
Unknown
Right. And, so if I can increase the overall, recovery factor, you know, this industry suffers with like a recovery factor of about 10% of hydrocarbon in place. Right? I want to increase that. I want to I want to get to, you know, 50 to 70, 100% if you can. But and and by increasing that recovery factor, that means I had to drill less wells right now.
00;44;14;27 - 00;44;40;01
Unknown
And where are we going to start drilling wells? No, we're not going to stop drilling wells. Are we going to replace sand in the in the frack business? No. Okay. But we can be we can be a second cousin to sand or sand is, is is the the primary. But we've done multiple jobs with just 100% ash and we've gotten a phenomenal result.
00;44;40;01 - 00;45;10;22
Unknown
So I think we're on we're starting to pivot. Okay. But we have to change the culture. Okay. And the culture has shifted slightly over the decades. You know, 20, 40 sand used to be the prince. Now it's not used anymore. Everybody's using 100 mash. And why is everybody using 100 mash? Well, because everybody else is okay and I don't.
00;45;10;22 - 00;45;36;08
Unknown
And I know that sounds disparaging, but I mean, that's what we do in this industry. You know, we we quickly copycat and and nobody wants to be 101. Right. Nobody wants to be our 001. Nobody wants to be the first to try. But we've had some fantastic clients that have stepped out of there and been innovative and said, let's give it a go.
00;45;36;10 - 00;46;02;06
Unknown
And we've had very positive, very positive early results from that. You know, the oil and gas industry is very innovative. If you see that over time, right. If you look over time, there's a lot of innovations that come out of the industry. However, like Curtis was saying, having that one person that completions engineer, that drilling engineer to stand up and say, I want to try something different, something we have to get into the uncomfortable factors in that case.
00;46;02;08 - 00;46;28;28
Unknown
And a lot of times it's comfortable to stay comfortable. Right. So, that's a bit of a challenge. But we've got like, like Curtis was saying from international major oil and gas companies, smaller independents, all utilizing it and seeing great results. So so future's bright. Let's key on innovation for one second. So without innovation, Midland Odessa would be a ghost town okay.
00;46;29;00 - 00;47;00;03
Unknown
Because when we unlock when this industry unlock horizontal drilling, you know man it was a it was a big deal that we got a 500ft horizontally. Now we're getting five miles okay. So innovation plays a critical role. So let's talk about slick water Frax for a moment okay. Everybody uses like water Frax now. Or what was the birth of slick water Frax Mitchell Energy in the Barnett Shale.
00;47;00;05 - 00;47;31;00
Unknown
It was a service company that couldn't cross-linked the gel, and they decided cut the concentration and pump it and unlock the Barnett Shale. You know, so some innovations are happened by mistakes and some innovations happen by brilliant science guy. So we're trying to avoid the the first. Right. We don't want to be a mistake. Yeah that's great I want you to take your product here.
00;47;31;00 - 00;47;59;01
Unknown
Hold it up. And for the operator watching. Yeah. And a nice short clip a moment. Let them know what this does and why everyone should be using it. So I would tell you that this is a much smaller Robin. It'll invade spaces where conventional sands can invade. It can be pumped at much lower rates because of its suspension qualities.
00;47;59;03 - 00;48;30;28
Unknown
And it's about a 15,000 pounds, or 15,000 p.s.i, crush strength, but stronger than than most things that we're using today. And, this doesn't take it doesn't take all the horsepower required. So and it and it's, a great product for re stimulation of, of, legacy wells as well. All right. Well said. Anything else I want to cover you want to get into refracts before we end it?
00;48;31;01 - 00;48;51;25
Unknown
Yeah. I think refracts is a very underserved market right now. And I think it's critical that, you know, if you got a, a field, a legacy field out there that you feel like that, you know, I've got some wells out here that, you know, the decline was very rapid on, you know, that an indication of near wellbore damage.
00;48;51;28 - 00;49;14;12
Unknown
We can come in there very economically and open that back up and, and and get those wells back on, back on pace. We've had wells that are making for barrels a day, and we've treated them very economically and they've returned that, you know, 25 barrels a day and they've made very well, sustain that for, several years.
00;49;14;18 - 00;49;37;26
Unknown
Okay. Now, those don't sound like massive numbers, you know, but if I'm a guy out there that's producing 100 barrels a day and that's my livelihood, and I can then, you know, take a very economic approach to enhancing that and taking that 100 barrels a day and turning it into 200 barrels a day. That's a big win. Yeah.
00;49;37;29 - 00;50;00;02
Unknown
Well, I think we, hit our quota here. We're sitting across a legend himself. Is no legend here. We got the analogies. We got into the weeds. This is this is the sand nerd out. I've been waiting for the whole year. So, Josh Curtis, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you for having. There's a lot of fun.
00;50;00;09 - 00;50;20;18
Unknown
So we're always. We're always ready to answer a question. Yeah, we have a website, too. If you wanted to get nerdy and check it out. Yeah. Let us know any, links or, you know, whatever. Just say it out loud. Now it's eco reach. Eco. Our e ach dot net. We've got case studies. We've got all the information on there, so go check it out.
00;50;20;21 - 00;50;38;20
Unknown
Yeah. I'd, I'd love to, have gone down, you know, actual use cases and stuff. Did y'all get into that with The Power Hour with John Little? We did some of that. Okay. So that'll be coming out after this. I know for for fact. So on our website, a lot of those use cases are documented on our website.
00;50;38;24 - 00;50;50;05
Unknown
Right. Well, yeah. So thanks again for coming on. Absolutely. So much for having me. Thank you.