The beasts of burden in the US shale sector are the pressure pumping units that takes the theory of hydraulic fracturing and put it into practice. Yet, for much of the past 2 decades, these high-horsepower machines have seen relatively scant technological advancement.
Then the industry downturn happened. Hundreds of older units were scuttled. Profit margins for what was left were squeezed as tight as ever. Budgets to invest in new, unproven technologies were scarce.
Modernizers from various corners of the industry rose to challenge the idea that pressure pumping technology is stagnate, or simply “dumb iron.” For the past couple of years, this crusade has been led by the largest pressure pumping firms in the US by horsepower, Halliburton and Schlumberger. Both have introduced fracturing fleets that, by automating key manual tasks, are accelerating completion times and improving machine reliability.
But they are not the lone innovators. On the other end of the spectrum are five lesser-known technology developers, most of them startups. Their new software and hardware products reveal that wherever you look on a fracturing spread, there are costs to trim and new efficiencies to be gained.•
Evolution Well Services
The problem: Stimulating an unconventional reservoir requires a lot of horsepower, which means burning a lot of diesel fuel. Even a small spread consumes around 9,500 gallons of diesel each day, costing near $30,000. Additionally, diesel-powered pumps dictate the construction of large and expensive well pads. As a rule, a single fleet needs up to three times the area of a drilling rig.
The solution: Based in The Woodlands, Texas, this startup uses 100% natural gas-burning turbine generators to feed its custom-designed hydraulic fracturing pumps.
These electrically powered pressure pumps, known as “e-fleets,” leverage the price arbitrage between diesel fuel and natural gas. Because of the high consumption rate of the machinery, the delta translates into quick and scalable•savings.
“On a monthly basis, that fuel substitution represents somewhere between $1 to $1.5 million—and that gets everybody’s attention,” said Ben Bodishbaugh, chief executive officer of Evolution.
Realizing such savings does require that a well site be near a ready supply of natural gas, which may be the e-fleets’ biggest limiter. Evolution points out that its system was designed to deliver the best economics by using unprocessed or lightly processed field gas that can be piped directly to the pad from producing wells or associated gas systems, which could help operators dial back flaring.
The firm deployed its first e-fleet in 2016 and has since expanded to six fleets. Each one consists of eight pumping units compared with conventional fleets in the US that range in size from 20–25 units.
