Kermit, Texas (AP) – It is longer than the width of the genus, snakes through the oil -west deposits and crawls at 10 miles / h – too slowly for a truck and too long for a train.
This is a new view: the longest conveyor in America.
Atlas Energy Solutions, based in Texas oil company, has installed a conveyor 42 miles (67 kilometers) to transport millions of tons of sand for hydraulic destruction. The belt company named “The Dune Express” moves from Tiny Kermit, Texas and across the state borders in Lea County, New Mexico. Tall and sluggish with lids that resemble solar modules, the steel structure can almost be mistaken for trains.
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There are few people in the remote western Texas to be amazed at the unusual machine in Kermit, a city with a population below 6000, where the sand is usually pulled from tractor trailers. During fraction, the fluid is pumped into the ground at high pressure to create holes or fractures that release oil. The sand helps to keep open holes as water, oil and gas pass through it.
But moving the sand with a truck is usually a long and potentially dangerous process, according to CEO John Turner. He said that massive trucks, moving sand and other industrial goods, are a common place in the oil -rich Perm pool and pose a danger to other drivers.
“Quite early, the delivery of the sand through a truck was not only ineffective, but it was dangerous,” he said.
The conveyor with a load capacity of 13 tonnes (11.79 metric tonnes) is designed to bypass and move with traffic.
Innovation is not new to the oil and gas industry, nor is it the idea of using a conveyor to move materials around. Another conveyor, which is thought to be the longest conveyor in the world – 61 miles long (98.17 kilometers) – carries a phosphorus from a mine to the western Sahara on the northwest coast of Africa, according to the NASA Observatory.
When moving sand with a truck, it has become an inconvenience, an unprecedented and risky investment opportunity has arisen: building a machine for $ 400 million to optimize the production of hydraulic destruction. The company became public in March 2023, partly to help pay the conveyor and end its first delivery in January, Turner said.
The sand sits in a pan-shaped pan with a lid that can be removed at any time, but most of it is unloaded in silos near the border of Texas and New Mexico. During its mileage, the sand is sold and sent to Fraking companies that move it by truck until the end of the trip.
Maintaining the belt rollers aligns and makes sure that it is running smoothly, are the largest obstacles to maintenance, according to Turner. The rollers are equipped with chips that signal when it is about to fail and must be replaced. This helps to prevent wear and keep the machine to operate consistently, Turner said.
The belt cuts a large oil patch in which environmentalists have long aroused fears about industry that disturb local habitats, including those of the Sagebrush lizard, which was named as an endangered species last year by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
“In addition, we know that the sand will accelerate the more incurred drilling nearby,” says Luke Metzger, CEO of Environment Texas. “We could see more drilling than we would do otherwise, which means more air pollution, more spills than we would do otherwise.”
Dune Express is currently working for about 12 to 14 hours a day with approximately half capacity, but the company expects it will rotate all hours later this year.
In New Mexico, La Brad Weber County Commissioner said he hoped the belt would ease traffic on a parallel highway, where car crashes are common.
“I believe it will have a very positive impact here,” he said.
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Latan reported from Austin, Texas.
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Lathan is a member of the Associated Press/Report body for America Statehouse News Initiative. The report on America is a non -profit national service program that raises journalists in local news halls to report insufficiently concealed issues.