Mining Sand to Get More Oil

Since Texas oil producer EOG Resources arrived in Ken Schmitt’s Wisconsin farming community last year, the cattle breeder has marveled each time he drives by the company’s work site on his way into town. It’s not oil rigs that capture his attention. “They got one hellacious pile of sand out there,” he says.

The rolling hills surrounding Chippewa County (pop. 60,000) in the northwest part of the state sit atop a deep deposit of a type of pure quartz sand coveted by the oil industry. The sand is used as part of the water and chemical mixture injected under high pressure into wells to crack oil-infused shale rock in a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The tiny grains of sand serve as wedges to prop the cracks open so oil and natural gas can flow up the well. With prices for frack sand soaring, oil companies such as EOG have begun mining their own in places such as rural Wisconsin.