It is longer than the width of Rhode Island, snakes across the oil fields of the southwest US and crawls at 16kph — too slow for a truck and too long for a train.
It is a new sight: the longest conveyor belt in the US.
Atlas Energy Solutions, a Texas-based oil field company, installed a 67km-long conveyor belt to transport millions of tonnes of sand for hydraulic fracturing. The belt the company named “The Dune Express” runs from tiny Kermit, Texas, and across state borders into Lea County, New Mexico. Tall and lanky with lids that resemble solar modules, the steel structure could almost be mistaken for a roller coaster.
Photo: AP
In remote West Texas, few people are around to marvel at the unusual machine in Kermit, a city with a population of fewer than 6,000, where the sand is typically hauled by tractor trailers. During fracking, liquid is pumped into the ground at a high pressure to create holes, or fractures, that release oil. The sand helps keep the holes open as water, oil and gas flow through it.
Moving the sand by truck is usually a long and potentially dangerous process, Atlas energy CEO John Turner said.
Massive trucks moving sand and other industrial goods are a common site in the oil-rich Permian Basin and pose a danger to other drivers, he said.
Photo: AP
“Pretty early on, the delivery of sand via truck was not only inefficient, it was dangerous,” he said.
The conveyor belt, with a freight capacity of 11.79 tonnes, was designed to bypass and trudge alongside traffic.
Innovation is not new to the oil and gas industry, nor is the idea to use a conveyor belt to move materials around. Another conveyor belt believed to be the world’s longest conveyor — at 98.17km — carries phosphorous from a mine in Western Sahara on the northwest coast of Africa, according to NASA Earth Observatory.
Photo: AP
When moving sand by truck became a nuisance, an unprecedented and risky investment opportunity arose: constructing a US$400 million machine to streamline the production of hydraulic fracturing.
The company went public in March 2023, in part, to help pay for the conveyor belt and completed its first delivery in January, Turner said.
The sand sits in a tray-shaped pan with a lid that can be removed at any point, but most of it gets offloaded into silos near the Texas and New Mexico border. Along its kilometers-long journey, the sand is sold and sent to fracking companies who move it by truck for the remainder of the trip.
Keeping the rollers on the belt aligned and making sure it runs smoothly are the biggest maintenance obstacles, Turner said.
The rollers are equipped with chips that signal when it is about to fail and need to be replaced, which helps prevent wear and tear and keep the machine running consistently, he said.
The belt cuts through a large oil patch where environmentalists have long raised concerns about the industry disturbing local habitats, including those of the sagebrush lizard, which was listed as an endangered species last year by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
“In addition to that, we know that the sand will expedite further drilling nearby,” Environment Texas executive director Luke Metzger said. “We could see more drilling than we otherwise would, which means more air pollution, more spills than we otherwise would.”
The Dune Express runs for about 12 to 14 hours a day at about half capacity, but the company expects it to be rolling along at all hours later this year.
In New Mexico, Lea County Commissioner Brad Weber said he hopes the belt alleviates traffic on a parallel highway where vehicle crashes are frequent.
“I believe it’s going to make a very positive impact here,” he said.
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
TECH WINNERS: Taiwan and South Korea reported robust trade, which suggests that they have critical advantages in the rapidly expanding AI supply chain, an official said Exports last month surged to a new high, as booming demand tied to artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure fueled shipments of advanced technology components, underscoring the nation’s pivotal role in the global semiconductor supply chain. Outbound shipments climbed to US$80.18 billion, the highest ever for a single month, rising 61.8 percent from a year earlier and marking the 29th consecutive month of growth, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. “The surge was driven primarily by global investment in AI infrastructure,” Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) said. The mass production of next-generation AI computing systems has accelerated procurement across the semiconductor supply
RSS