Sand, water are mixing to build a West Texas sand mine industry

[TexasTowelie]

U.S. Silica joins Texas Conservation Plan for dunes sagebrush lizard as it builds mines in Crane, Dawson counties

Take an intense focus on cutting costs and stir in shifting tastes in preferences for frac sand. Combine with abundance of West Texas sand dunes that can be mined at low cost, and you’ve created a magnet drawing sand mine companies to West Texas.

U.S. Silica Holdings of Frederick, Maryland, is constructing not one, but two mines — one in Crane County about five miles south of Interstate 20 near Farm-to-Market Road 1053 and one about 60 miles north of Midland near Lamesa in Dawson County.

The two new mines represent a combined investment of about $400 million and are testament to the company’s bullish outlook on the long-term economic health of the Permian Basin oil and gas industry, said Michael Lawson, spokesman for the company. He estimates almost half of future demand for frac sand will be coming from the Permian Basin.

Both sites offered all that the company was looking for in a location: “High quality reserves, ample water supply, transportation infrastructure and no lizard,” Lawson said in a phone interview from his Maryland office.

Read more: http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/Sand-water-are-mixing-to-build-a-West-Texas-sand-12363543.php

[They_Live]

1. there goes the water supply

of where ever. villians.