THOMPSON: Rob Sidley is sitting on a gold mine, thanks to Mother Nature.
His family-owned company produces the special sand needed for the drilling boom in Ohio’s deep layer of Utica shale.
The sand is perfect for the hydraulic fracturing process — or fracking — which uses force to open cracks in the shale and free up natural gas, oil and other lucrative products.
The sand is nearly 100 percent quartz. It is round and spherical. It is hard and strong. It is resistant to water and chemicals. It is a sand that flows almost like a liquid. It can survive heavy pressures deep underground.
It takes 6,000 to 8,000 tons to frack one well, depending on the size of the well, so Sidley has a valuable commodity as drillers begin to focus their attention on eastern Ohio.
His company, R.W. Sidley Inc., is based in Painesville and its sand operation is in Thompson, about 20 miles northeast of Cleveland in Geauga County.
Fracking is the term used to describe the process in which water, sand and certain toxic chemicals are pumped under pressure into horizontal wells thousands of feet below the ground to free up natural gas, oil and wet gases such as propane, ethane and butane.
The grains of sand act as pillars deep underground, keeping tiny fissures open so that more natural gas can be extracted.
The industry says fracking has been safely used for decades. Critics worry that fracking could pollute drinking water supplies.
In 2000, the fracking sand sold for $35 a ton.
Today, Sidley’s sand sells for $60 to $80 a ton, far more than the $6 a ton for run-of-the-mill Ohio sands.
“It’s all about Mother Nature and location,” he said. “It’s an unusual deposit. …We just have what we have. And we love what we have. It’s something special.”
Although Ohio is a big sand-and-gravel state, Sidley’s is one of only a handful of sand-and-gravel operations in Ohio that produces suitable sand for fracturing, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
A booming industry
In 2010, Ohio was No. 11 in the United States for overall sand production at 15 million tons.
In that year, Ohio had 157 companies with 227 sand-and-gravel operations in 52 counties. Ohio’s sand was valued at nearly $95 million. Portage and Stark counties are among Ohio’s top sand and gravel producers, along with Hamilton and Butler counties in the southwest corner of the state and Tuscarawas south of Canton.
But most of Ohio is not blessed with the best sands for fracking, said Patrick A. Jacomet, executive director of the Gahanna-based Ohio Aggregates & Industrial Minerals Association.
By most accounts, suitable fracking sands are found only in three counties — Knox between Akron and Columbus, Ross south of Columbus, and Geauga, he said.
Most Ohio sands are too soft or the wrong shape or too prone to react with water and chemicals, he said.
Nationally, the market for American fracking sands quadrupled from 2000 to 2009, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It said drillers used 6.5 million metric tons of sands in 2009 and that total doubled in 2010. A metric ton is 2,204 pounds.
The federal agency estimated that 40 percent of industrial sand production in the United States in 2010 went to fracking.
Most fracking sands come from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Arkansas and Texas.
In fact, as the demand has skyrocketed, there are growing concerns in those areas about quickly expanding sand-and-gravel operations marring the landscape and causing local problems.
Wells are fracked after they are drilled, a process that typically takes about 10 days. Wells may be refracked up to 40 times in subsequent years to continue to break free more deposits of gas, oil and other products.
Nearly perfect
According to Sidley, quartz or silica is the key to his sand.
Most sand is 60 to 70 percent quartz. Some river sand has zero. Sands with at least 95 percent silica are wanted for fracking and certified by the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group. Sidley’s sand has been tested at 99.7 percent silica.
Drillers also take the sand’s shape and strength into account.
Deeper wells require more pressure, and that takes a toll on the sand and its durability, Sidley said.
Sand must also be resistant to dissolving in water and the toxic chemicals used in the fracking process.
Jacomet’s trade association is trying to educate its 200 members about the needs of drillers and is looking for other pockets of sand in Ohio that would be acceptable. “There could be more out there,” he said.
His association also is looking into a resin coating for Ohio sands to make them tougher — something being done elsewhere.
Resin-coated sand is more expensive, but it may be an option, Jacomet said.
According to Sidley, it costs $600 to $800 a ton for resin-coated sand and $1,000 to $1,500 a ton for man-made ceramic sands that can also be used in fracking.
Sidley’s firm supplies his sand to well service companies that in turn provide it to companies such as Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., the biggest driller in Ohio.
Reportedly, Schlumberger Ltd., a French firm with offices in Houston, Paris and The Hague, and the largest well service firm, is handling 12 million tons of fracking sand annually in the United States. Texas-based Halliburton is another player.
Big investment
Sidley declined to reveal how much fracking sand his company is expecting to produce, but the company annually produces 400,000 to 500,000 tons of sand and gravel from its 1,800-acre operation with its 150 employees.
R.W. Sidley Inc. also deals in concrete, aggregates, blocks and masonry, building products, landscape materials, pre-assembled buildings, trucks and golf course construction.
The company had been hauling fracking sands for others for two years in Pennsylvania and West Virginia when it decided to develop its own high-quartz product, which had been used only in highly specialized markets until recently.
The company invested heavily, spent months getting the sands tested and certified, and now is marketing its own fracking product.
The firm is shipping its fracking sand in 6,500-cubic-yard pneumatic tanker trucks with air pumps, also called air cans. That makes it easier to load and unload the fracking sands, he said.
A 25-ton truck can be loaded or unloaded in 25 minutes, he said.
The firm has 20 air-can trucks to move fracking sands and expects to add another 20 in the next 12 months, he said.
His firm is working eight-hour shifts five days a week to excavate, move, screen, wash, dry and sort the sands at the Geauga County operation.
Sidley says his company “could easily quadruple its production of fracking sand, if need be.” That would require expanding operations to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said.
There is enough high-quartz sand in the Thompson pits to last for years. “My grandchildren won’t have to worry about running out in their lifetimes,” said Sidley, 51, who has no grandchildren yet. “We’ve got a lot of sand right here.”
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
