Proppant Today interviewed Rasool Mohammad, the CEO of Select Sands, to learn more about the Sandtown Project and the steps the company is taking to bring the Arkansas mine on line. The Sandtown Project is located in north central Arkansas, near Cave City.
About Select Sands Corp. TSXV: SNS, OTC: CLICF
Source: www.selectsandscorp.com
The Sandtown Project’s mining resource is the St Peter Sandstone which outcrops on the site. The St Peter Sandstone is also mined in Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota, often called northern white sand. Sandtown offers a silica sand of 99% purity with a brilliant white color. The purity of the silica and crush strength of the Select Sands resource is comparable with mines to the north. The natural resource offers 100 mesh, 40/70 and 30/50 frac sand products per API specification.
| 100 mesh | 40/70 | 30/50 | |
| Crush Resistance | 10k | 9 to 10k | 7k |
| Resource Split | 57 to 59% | 30 to 33% | 11 to 15% |
Read more about Sandtown’s quality analysis on the Select Sands website.
Fourth Quarter Outlook: First Sales from Sandtown
Select Sands is preparing to deliver the first finished product mined from Sandtown in November 2015. As we enter the fourth quarter of 2015, the proppant market continues to experience downward pricing pressure from the oilfield. To remain competitive from the start, the CEO indicated that the company is taking an innovative approach: opening with no capital investment. The sandstone resource is being mined with contractors and frac sand is washed, dried and sized offsite at a contract plant. According to Rasool Mohammad, “Select Sands is committed to hiring locally with 95% of the contractors coming from Arkansas and the remaining 5% from Missouri and elsewhere in the US.”
Looking Ahead: Plant Build Out in 2016
Depending on market conditions, the company intends to build a wash plant at Sandtown in early 2016 and truck washed sand to nearby Batesville where the sand will be dried, sized and loaded into railcars or trucks. The dry plant has access to the Union Pacific railroad with the ability to deliver to the Eagle Ford and Permian basins and also to Houston for export. Zig Vitols, COO and a Director of Select Sands Corp., a former President, Mid-South of Martin Marietta, is overseeing the development of the logistics piece.
Select Sands intends to ship 850,000 tons per year by rail and truck from the Batesville siding. The sweet spot for the Sandtown products are in the Midcontinent: Haynesville, Fayetteville, and the Oklahoma plays. In addition to shipping granular silica to the oil and gas markets, Sandtown’s silica purity is such that it is suitable for glass and well cementing applications.
International Market for Frac Sand
Select Sands is keeping an eye on the international market as well; the crush resistance and high purity of the St Peter Sandstone is bar none. Mohammad is developing markets in the Middle East, South America and in the South Asian countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh where fracking is active and demand for proppant is being filled with more costly ceramic and resin-coated proppants. According to Mohammad “No natural sand proppant can compete with St Peter sands.”
About Proppant Today, LLC
Proppant Today, LLC serves the proppant market by providing deep insights into proppant and frac sand use and demand in the unconventional oil and gas industry. At Proppant Today’s website, read our blog and daily news feed and purchase the US Proppant Market and Forecast Report: 2015 to 2020.
– Holly Bellmund, President, Proppant Today, LLC
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