Offshore drilling may be off-limits because of the recent spill, but Texas is undergoing a “boom” when it comes to exploration inside the state. A huge, underground oil and gas field is promising big results, and that’s having an economic impact on San Antonio.
“I wish I had a crystal ball.” No one knows, no one knows. They just pick up the phone and start ordering equipment,” said Chase Hooker, Director of new business development for APPCO; a company that makes equipment called Frac-Sanders.
These huge, $250,000 machines deliver a special sand mixture to a well. The “frac” sand helps force fossil fuels out of the ground. Despite making a dozen of these 25-ton machines a month, APPCO is back-ordered through 2011.
Hooker said, “February first is when the upswing started out, and I had to ramp up production. That includes all my manufacturing facilities.”
What’s driving business is economics, blended with new drilling techniques, combined with a search for alternative fuels. And natural gas just happens to be one alternative fuel Texas is full of.
A recent, local discovery in south Texas isn’t hurting either. Called the Eagle Ford Shale Formation, it promises to be one of the largest deposits in the United States. Big oil is drilling there, across several counties, and they need machines like the frac-sanders to make those fields produce.
“My production needs to increase quite fast!” Hooker said with a laugh.
