North American E&P operators are on a continuous quest to fracture wells faster and cheaper while improving recoveries and productivity.

As a result, frac spreads are being regularly reconfigured to meet varying horsepower requirements or preferred fuel mixes, while completions companies work on improving supply chains to deliver more materials faster as fracturing intensity increases, executives said on year-end earnings calls.

“Every fleet that we have deployed is a different size,” said Patterson-UTI Energy, Inc. president and chief executive officer Andy Hendricks.

“It even changes from pad to pad. It may be a high amount of horsepower on one pad, and for the same customer it moves and it shrinks for the next pad. It’s constantly changing.”

But overall demand for horsepower on site continues growing, he said.

“We’re doing more simulfrac, we’re doing more trimulfrac, and even on the same simulfrac we’re getting requests for higher rates and higher pressures. So that’s causing us to put more equipment on location.”

Patterson-UTI estimates around 30 per cent of its frac jobs are now simulfracs.

The last few years have also seen a significant increase in pumping hours per day, he said.

“Some providers are encountering technical limitations on most of their fleets, with our average frac fleet now pumping over 22 hours per day.”

Operators are now testing continuous pumping to further push the envelope, Hendricks said.

“With continuous pumping, our team has been leaders in executing on the growing trend to achieve 24-hour operations.”

But continuous pumping needs much more horsepower and equipment on location relative to a normal operation, he said, requiring about 20 to 30 per cent more capital.

“If you’re going to pump for multiple days straight you still need to be able to access pumps to maintain them. You have to have more pumps than you’re using so that you can swap pumps in and out of the lines while you’re circulating without stopping the circulation.”

The increased amount of pumping power on site has made the frac fleet count less of a reliable metric to determine industry completion activity, he said.

“The challenge for people trying to understand the business is that while the fleet count looks like it’s going down, we’ve actually remained relatively steady in the amount of horsepower that’s been deployed,” Hendricks noted.

“We’ve been moving horsepower around to different places and growing the amount that we have on the well site. What that means is it continues to reduce overall supply in the frac market.”

Fuel switching continues

Operators are also looking for flexibility in the fuel sources that power fleets, said ProPetro Holding Corp. chief executive officer Sam Sledge.

In the Permian where ProPetro operates, there are a variety of local conditions that can influence fuel choices, he said. The company has Tier 2 diesel, Tier 4 DGB dual fuel, and e-fleets to meet that demand. It is also adding some direct drive gas power to its fleet.

“There’s a lot of regional pockets in the Permian in [terms of] size and sophistication of E&Ps that value all of these different types of offerings,” Sledge said.

“And I think what we have now is a very good portfolio for us to be able to service the biggest, most sophisticated E&Ps in the Permian, but also the growing independents that still exist in an entrepreneurial area like West Texas and New Mexico.”

The company is progressing its fleet towards more Tier 4 and e-fleets, he said, but now sees some value in maintaining some older technology.

“It’s a little bit less of we need to grow a customer from diesel to dual fuel into electric. That was a game that we played very heavily and very successfully into the last several years,” he said.

“I think most of the E&Ps that we’re dealing with, they know exactly what they want and they know exactly what fuel sources that they want to utilize, wherever their specific acreage might be.”

Patterson-UTI said the shift to gas or e-fleets is continuing, with all its equipment that burns natural gas currently working in the challenging U.S. market.

“That market still remains very tight because of the amount of horsepower growth on a per-fleet basis,” said Hendricks.

Canadian market seeing increased demand for gas power

Natural gas activity dominates the completions market in Canada, unlike in the U.S. where 80 per cent of activity targets oil.

Operators want to use the gas being produced to fuel completions operations, Trican Well Service Ltd.’s president and chief executive officer Brad Fedora said on the company’s year-end earnings call. 

Around 70 per cent of Trican’s fracturing business targets natural gas in the Montney or Duvernay, said Fedora.

“They want to burn natural gas in place of diesel anytime they can, just due to the cost savings and the lower emissions.”

Trican has spent the last few years upgrading its fleet to Tier 4 dual fuel, while adding electric ancillary equipment on location, he said. It is now in the process of introducing 100 per cent gas-powered pumpers.

“We expect to have a 10-pumper frac spread available and operating by early fall. What this enables us to do is have less pumps on location, less people, and pump 100 per cent natural gas instead of a combination of natural gas and diesel,” noted Fedora.

“For our customers, it means lower fuel prices, lower emissions. And for us, I think these new assets will be a little bit better at dealing with a variety of field gas, so we should have more efficient operations in that respect as well.”

The company is finding a ready market for electric ancillary equipment as well, he said.

“We’ve just put into the field our fourth set of ancillary equipment, which includes chem blending, the sand belts, etc. We basically cannot keep up with demand on those electric assets.”

Trican expects to receive delivery of its first natural gas-powered semi-trucks this year, he added.

“So, you know, what pulls the big tractor units that pull the sand around, and we will slowly but surely evolve our trucking fleet to run on natural gas.”

Like in the U.S., completions intensity is increasing, said Fedora.

‘We’re still seeing wells get longer, using more sand per well.”

“In 2025, I think we pumped about 8.5 million tons of sand as an industry, and there’s lots of analysts that are forecasting that that’s going to grow to over 12 million tons per year by 2030.”

While some operators are sourcing their own sand, Trican is focused on improving its logistics to capture more revenues, he said.

“We’ve got like 50-100 rail cars of sand being pumped into a well over a period that might only be 48-hours long, and so you’re having a B-train of sand show up every 12-15 minutes on locations.

“Getting that logistics part right is a huge driver in efficiency for our customer and profitability for us.”