Sugar Land, TX-based Santrol, a Fairmount Minerals company, now has five Eagle Ford Shale rail terminals to handle proppant used for hydraulic fracturing in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas. By expanding to five Eagle Ford terminals, Santrol can ship more than one million tons of proppant per year throughout the formation, the company said. The terminals are supplying Santrol’s northern white frack sand and resin-coated proppants. “We have more terminals with more available rail car capacity than any other frack sand supplier in the region,” said Tom Bonno, Santrol terminal field service manager. The five terminals are located in: Alice, where there are two, Gardendale, Gonzales and San Antonio. All of the terminals operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Mexican state-owned petroleum company Pemex will use Chimera Energy Corp.‘s nonhydraulic shale oil extraction system on Central Tajin Area well Nos. 4, 5 and 6 in the Chicontepic Basin of Mexico, Houston-based Chimera said. The system was designed to replace hydraulic fracturing (fracking) without using water, natural gas “or the pumping of anything hot into the well,” Chimera said. Earlier this month Chimera said Pemex would provide the first location for using the new system in the Western Hemisphere (see Shale Daily, Aug. 15). Chimera, which is expected to present the system at the North American Prospect Expo to be held in Houston, TX, in February, is in the process of reengineering the method for mass production, relicensing and sales. Calgary-based GasFrac Energy Services Inc. is awaiting a U.S. patent for its liquefied propane gas (LPG) technology, which would eliminate the use of water in fracking (see Shale Daily, Nov. 14, 2011).