American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2024 - 68

SpecialReport: Permian Basin Playmakers
says. " The buy-in from leadership shows
how much the members want to improve
their communities. "
Proppant Delivery
About half the oil field traffic in West
Texas relates to sand deliveries, estimates
Kyle Turlington, vice president of investor
relations for Atlas Energy Solutions. " If
we can reduce that traffic, we can make
communities safer, reduce emissions and
increase the Permian Basin's efficiency
by enabling drivers to do shorter hauls, "
he predicts.
The importance of advancing proppant
logistics is rising as completion efficiencies
improve and en route sand volumes
increase, Turlington suggests. " The average
hydraulic fracturing crew has gone
from pumping sand 16 or 17 hours a day
a few years ago to pumping well north
of 20 hours a day, " he compares. " Combine
that with longer laterals and the
growing popularity of simulfracs, and
the amount of sand an average crew
pumps each month has jumped from
40,000 to 65,000 tons. "
To simplify sand delivery, Turlington
points out that Atlas is building the Dune
Express, a 42-mile conveyor belt that extends
from Atlas' mine in Kermit, Tx., to
the middle of the Delaware Basin. " The
conveyor is powerful, " he says. " We
expect it to shorten average hauls in the
Delaware from 70 miles to 15 or 20. "
Although using conveyor belts to transport
proppant may be new, Turlington
says conveyors have a long history of
hauling bulk materials for other types of
mines, including many in the United
States and Canada.
The Dune Express is scheduled to
enter service in the fourth quarter. It has
two permanent load-out facilities, which
are helpfully named End of Line and
State Line, but Turlington says Atlas can
deploy mobile equipment to retrieve sand
at any point along the belt.
" Because of the uniqueness of the
Delaware, almost none of the trucks that
carry the sand will touch public roads, "
Turlington adds. " Instead, they will be
on private lease roads, which can reduce
traffic on public roads as much as 70%.
" To accommodate weight restrictions
on public roads, a typical sand truck
carries 24 tons, " he notes. " We designed
our trailers to hold 35 tons when they
are on private roads, and we can have
each truck haul two or three trailers for
a total capacity of 105 tons. Compare
one driver carrying 105 tons doing a 15
mile drop off versus one driver carrying
24 tons doing a 70 mile drop off, and it
is easy to see how much more efficient
our last mile will be once the Dune Express
is here. "
Mobile Mines
To reduce miles driven in areas far
from the Winkler sand trend or the Dune
Express, Atlas employs mobile mines
that can extract sand from small deposits
close to activity, Turlington mentions.
He notes that the company acquired these
mobile mines when it purchased HiCrush
Inc. in March.
The company estimates that the mines
cut driving distances as much as 90% in
some instances. " The mines tend to be
20 or 25 miles from the well site, " Turling68
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2024

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