The company continued to benefit from the shift towards shale oil, natural gas liquids and enhanced oil recovery operations as the slow recovery in gas prices pushed exploration firms to focus on liquids.
U.S. Silica specializes in commercial silica used in a variety of industries, the most prominent being "frac sand" to stimulate oil and gas recovery in formations such as shale.
What will be the impact of higher gas and oil prices on the recovery?
The company produces premium monocrystalline sand, which is used to improve the recovery of oil and gas during hydraulic fracturing drilling.
These generally require enhanced oil recovery techniques such as gas (CO2) injection, chemical injection, microbial injection, cyclic steam injection, steam flooding, and fire flooding.
Think about what this advancement has meant just in terms of access to the resources: When drilling into a hydrocarbon bearing formation 100 feet thick, vertical drilling would allow an operator to contact 100 feet of rock, which would limit your potential recovery to whatever oil or gas would flow into that length of pipe.
Expanding the supply of affordable oil and gas is the single best bet for economic recovery in 2012 and beyond.
Private equity backed 2Co wants to build a new coal plant above the Hatfield coal mine and pump the gas to North Sea oil fields where it can be used for enhanced oil recovery.
Oil recovery rates have declined, and, with no remedy in sight for the gas reinjection shortage, this decline may accelerate.
Anticipating the potential backlash of stellar profits amid a stalling recovery and a hurting consumer, the company tried to distance itself from oil and gas prices, according to AP.
But technological advances and improvements in recovery methods, as well as reduction of water usage and greenhouse gas emissions, have made oil sands a viable and popular option for the future of U.S. energy.
FORBES: America's Energy Future May Lie In Canada's Oil Sands
This figure is based in part on the thought that big oil companies like ExxonMobil, which recently agreed to buy the natural gas company XTO Energy, will increase investment in recovery technology to squeeze more gas out of huge stateside shale formations.
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