Board Thread:Darwin - Fluid layout help requests/@comment-2066231-20131119120948/@comment-24076392-20140124023754

One of the significant out-growths of America’s nascent Shale oil and gas boom is the subsidiary booms it is creating in other industries. Businesses that either service the oil and gas industries or rely on its end products as feedstock for products of their own are bringing thousands of jobs back from overseas and investing billions of dollars in new domestic infrastructure.

Nowhere has this direct cause and effect been any more apparent than in America’s rail industry, and nowhere is this impact more visible than in the Eagle Ford Shale region, where four major new rail terminals have opened in the last two years. Media coverage of this rail renaissance has focused on increased rail transport of crude oil from areas where the necessary pipeline infrastructure doesn’t yet exist. And rail transport has been a godsend in plays like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, for that reason, and because of rail’s versatility in being able to route crude oil shipments to any number of market and refining centers.

But the most recent Eagle Ford region rail yard to open – the Southton Railyard just south of San Antonio – has a different initial focus for its transport services:  Sand. Anyone familiar with the technology of hydraulic fracturing knows that sand, in large quantities, is a significant ingredient to the success of the process of “fracking” All topics about PCB technology http://pcb.hqew.net/special/ any shale well. Sand is pumped into the well along with water and chemicals to not only help create the fractures in the very dense shale rock below, but to also serve as the “proppant” that holds the fractures open against immense geologic pressure, allowing the oil and natural gas to flow through them and into the production tubing.