Sand Declared the "Unsung Hero" of Battle Between OPEC and U.S. Shale

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From Oilprice.com:
The late-2014, Saudi-initiated oil-price war may have taken the ‘boom’ out of the US shale industry as it seriously threatened OPEC market share, but Saudi victory has been elusive: US shale has proven amazingly resilient. The industry has adapted quickly to the new playing field, and the unsung hero of a new uptick in drilling and investment isn’t just true grit—it’s sand. 
The Saudi victory is equally dulled by the fact that it was not a decline in US shale production that rebalanced supply and demand; rather, it was chaos in Libya, militant attacks in Nigeria, massive fires in Canada and the destabilization of OPEC’s own Venezuela. 
US shale made good use of the down-time to regroup and innovate. And now, with the drilling rig count consistently rising, drilling activity coming back on track and new investment surfacing in our favorite shale patches, it is perhaps ironic that the dessert Kingdom should find sand its new enemy in the next phase of this battle for market share.

Sand has been the most significant innovation on the US shale playing field. 
“North American producers are rapidly increasing efficiency and reducing production costs, and we’re just at the beginning of this innovation curve,” says Select Sands Corp.CEO Rasool Mohammad.
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