• (314) 500-0595
  • Contact Us
Pontotoc Sand and Stone
  • Products
    • Tier 1 Frac Sand
      • 100 Mesh
      • 40/70 Mesh
      • 40/80 Mesh
    • Crushed Limestone
      • Limestone Rock
      • Chips
      • Screenings
      • Limestone Rip Rap
    • Industrial Sand
      • Metal Casting Sand
      • Silica Sand for Glass Industry
      • Industrial Ceramic Sand
  • Industry Uses
    • Oil & Gas Industry
    • Construction
    • Roofing Industry
    • Glass Industry
    • Road Construction
  • Facilities
    • Missouri
    • Arkansas
    • Frac Sand Oklahoma
    • Rock Quarry
    • Cave City Marina
  • Safety
  • About Us
    • Green Initiatives
    • Our Innovative Truck
      Loading Process
    • Careers
    • Blog
  • Menu Menu

What Is Frac Sand Used for in the Drilling Process?

Frac sand is a completion agent and method utilized in the hydraulic fracturing drilling process by companies like Pontotoc Sand & Stone to produce oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids from reservoirs. In this article, we’ll walk through what frac sand is, how frac sand is used in the drilling process, the differences between fracking and drilling, the benefits of hydraulic fracturing, and the steps of the process. Here’s everything you need to know:

Understanding Frac Sand

Frac sand is quartz sand material with high purity and durability, typically found in small, round grains. Frac sand is a crush-resistant material produced primarily for applications in petroleum and other industrial industries. The versatile sand material is a key agent in hydraulic fracturing for producing petroleum fluids like natural gas liquids and oil from base rock units.

Hydraulic Fracturing Production

Ground materials like organic shale contain considerable amounts of natural gas, natural gas liquids, and oil that do not flow into wells independently. Shale can’t freely flow into wells because rock formations lack permeability to seep into small pore spaces.

Hydraulic fracturing solves pore limitations by creating and generating within fracing wells. The drilling process involves well drilling into rock sediment, sealing well portions in the petroleum-bearing zone, and pumping water under intense pressure into the fracing portions of the well. Well water is treated with highly-specialized chemicals and thickeners to create gel in the well. The gel is a critical agent to expand the water’s ability to move frac sand grains into position for pumping efficiently.

Providers like Pontotoc Sand & Stone place large industrial pumps at the earth’s surface, increasing water pressure in the sealed portions of wells. Water pressure is increased until the breaking point of surrounding rock formations is reached. Once the breaking point is reached in the drilling process, the well ruptures, allowing water to rapidly advance into created fractures, extending the resource farther into rock sediment. As billions of sand grains are carried deep into fracing wells by the sudden rupture and rush of water, thousands of tons of frac sand are also created within the well.

What Is Sand Used for in Fracking?

Frac sand is used as a proppant throughout the hydraulic fracturing drilling process. As you can probably guess, pumps will eventually be turned off during the process. The fractures deflate to a degree, but cannot permanently close due to the tons of frac and grain sand within the well.

New fractures in the grain are held open by durable sand grains that form a network of pore spaces that allows fluids to flow freely through the rock into the ground. Frac sand is a critical agent throughout the process and is known as a proppant because the materials props open the fractures when pumps aren’t operating.

Although frac sand is the most commonly used proppant for most fracing companies, other materials like aluminum beads, ceramic beads, and sintered bauxite can be used. Frac sand typically delivers the most quality performance and is the top choice for most petroleum businesses.

Are you interested in learning more about the use of sand for hydraulic fracturing and how frac sand is used in the drilling process? Check out this helpful guide that dives into everything frac sand related.

What is Frac Sand?

The Difference Between Fracking and Drilling

The main difference between fracking and drilling is found in each method’s process. Fracking uses fluid to expand the shale pores to extract oil and gas, while drilling pulls available resources in reservoirs. Below, we’ll run through the specifics of conventional drilling and hydraulic fracturing:

Conventional Drilling

Oil wells use traditional drilling methods, a process that has been conducted for decades. Wells are first drilled vertically to reach underground reservoirs of oil and gas. Once drilling has reached the desired level in the well, the area’s casing is perforated. The perforation process opens gaps in rock formation and surrounding areas. Conventional drilling methods are heavily limited because they can only access oil and natural gas in the surrounding area at the end of the well.

Hydraulic Fracturing

A hydraulically fractured well is much more versatile in the fact that a well can be drilled vertically or horizontally. The process begins similarly to a traditional drilling method, with the well being perforated once the desired level has been reached. The specifics of the process begin with high-pressure fluids pumped into rock formations located in the well. The fracturing fluid utilized contains components of chemicals, sand, and primarily water. Fluid solutions then expand perforations, causing the rock to fracture. Finally, oil and gas are released from the porous rock material. Hydraulic fracturing is versatile because horizontal drilling can expand from anywhere between 100 feet to 2,000 feet into the ground to capture more oil and gas.

Benefits of Hydraulic Fracturing

  • Greater gravel packing and placement
  • Decreased pressure drops, minimizes issues with deposition
  • Increased drainage areas
  • Minimized sand production with decreased pressure drops
  • Increased flow rates of oil and gas from fractured wells
  • The interconnection of natural fractures

The Frac Sand Drilling Process

Before sand can be used as a critical agent in fracing, companies like Pontotoc use a 10-step frac sand production process to extract material from the ground. Listed below are the steps:

  • Vegetation removal
  • Topsoil and rock layer removal
  • Sandstone removal
  • Excavation
  • Reduction
  • Wash Sand
  • Stockpiling for final stages
  • Reject material settling
  • Dry reject material
  • Backfilling unwanted rock
Roof tiles or shingles typical of the northwestern pacific coast_ wooden texture and geometrical patterns

Choose Our Frac Sand Drilling Process at Pontotoc Sand & Stone

Pontotoc is an industry-leading provider of sand and stone. Our frac sand is used for easy gas and oil extraction in any hydraulic fracturing drilling process. Contact our team of experts today for quality frac sand material.

Share This Post

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail

Related Postings

Image of pumps used for fracing

Types of Washing & Classifying Equipment for Frac Sand

Tier 1 Frac Sand
Read more
May 4, 2023
https://pontotocsandandstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Image-of-pumps-used-for-fracing.jpg 1250 2000 AbstraktMarketing /wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Pontotoc-White-Logo.png AbstraktMarketing2023-05-04 09:00:002023-06-03 20:31:21Types of Washing & Classifying Equipment for Frac Sand
Image of two workers operating a sand crushing machine.

Types of Crushers for Frac Sand

Tier 1 Frac Sand
Read more
May 2, 2023
https://pontotocsandandstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Image-of-two-workers-operating-a-sand-crushing-machine..jpg 1250 2000 AbstraktMarketing /wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Pontotoc-White-Logo.png AbstraktMarketing2023-05-02 09:00:002023-06-03 20:31:22Types of Crushers for Frac Sand
Image of a truck loading up with sand.

Frac sand load in process

Tier 1 Frac Sand
Read more
April 27, 2023
https://pontotocsandandstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Image-of-a-truck-loading-up-with-sand..jpg 1250 2000 AbstraktMarketing /wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Pontotoc-White-Logo.png AbstraktMarketing2023-04-27 09:00:002023-06-03 20:31:23Frac sand load in process

Categories

  • Crushed Limestone
  • Info
  • limestone
  • Tier 1 Frac Sand

Contact Us

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Pontotoc logo

Products

Tier 1 Frac Sand

Crushed Limestone

Industrial Sand

 

Industries

Oil & Gas

Construction

Roofing Industry

Glass Industry

Oklahoma

18644 CR 1720
Stonewall, OK 74874

580-777-2117

Missouri

211 N. Broadway St. Suite 2850
St. Louis, MO 63102

(314) 500-0595

Website by Abstrakt Marketing Group © 2022
  • Privacy Policy
  • Sitemap
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OKLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept settingsHide notification only