Chesapeake brings in era of the monster frack

25,000 tons of sand pumped into single gas well in Louisiana

The era of the monster frack has arrived in North America, and Chesapeake Energy Corp. is singing its praises.

Chesapeake said Thursday at an analyst conference that it set a record for fracking by pumping more than 25,000 tons of sand down one Louisiana natural gas well, a process the shale driller christened “propageddon.”

The super-sized dose of sand — known as “proppant” — is able to open bigger and more numerous cracks in the rock for oil and gas to flow. Output from the well increased 70 per cent over traditional fracking techniques, Jason Pigott, vice-president of operations, said.

“What we’re doing is unleashing hell on every gas molecule downhole,” Pigott said.

Shale drillers aren’t holding back in North American shale fields, where the average amount of sand used for each well has doubled since 2014, according to Evercore ISI.

At the same time, the length that wells are drilled sideways underground has grown by 50 per cent, and the number of zones for hydraulic fracking are also up by half. Each zone of the well isolated for each frack is also growing larger as service companies attempt to break down more of the oil-soaked rock into rubble and cram more sand into the crevices for the hydrocarbons to escape.

The more massive and complex wells are helping producers manage through the worst financial crisis in a generation by drawing more oil and gas at reduced costs.

Explorers are taking advantage of the larger frack jobs while prices for oilfield work remains low.

Halliburton Co., the world’s largest fracking provider, told analysts and investors this week that about 70 per cent of the industry’s fleet of frack pumps are being put to use.

Halliburton confirmed it executed the record frack for Chesapeake.

The price to frack a well is so low for explorers that the work is still unprofitable on the services’ side, Paal Kibsgaard, chief executive at Schlumberger Ltd., told analysts and investors on Friday.

Still, drilling more complex wells, particularly for so-called “super laterals,” has helped the world’s largest oil services provider find a clear path to profitability for that type of work, he said.