By Justin Renfro, President, OmniTRAX Energy Solutions

The energy business has never been for the faint of heart. From the original mines and wells through the booms and busts, more fortunes have been made and lost in the oil & gas industry than perhaps any other. Now, as technology has become a cornerstone of successful companies, executives need the most professional and effective third party relationships more than ever.

Nowhere in the energy industry is this truer than in logistics. The emphasis on supply chain management of critical materials like frac sand is changing the sector more quickly than it has in decades. Consider:

• There have been at least 15 new entrants in the frac sand production race during the last two years.
• There are 10 new last mile companies now offering solutions to handle all that sand at the well-site before it enters the blender. These join another dozen prominent sand logistics solution companies competing to own the “Whole Mile.”
• There are more than 2,000 trucks hauling frac sand in the Permian alone and perhaps as many as 12,000 in all the basins. These are owned by more than 100 different companies.

E&P and oil field services companies now rely on logistics specialists to optimize the flow of consumables to the well sites more than ever before. At the same time, these logistics companies are facing a myriad of staffing and resource allocation challenges that threaten the operating environment of their customer base.

Successful “Whole Mile” energy logistics providers will offer one or more of the following solutions:

• Highly efficient sand terminals serving the most prolific shale plays
• Strategic placement and containerized storage of sand for easy access within the basins
• Innovative bin-to-blender containerized sand delivery systems

OmniTRAX Energy Solutions is the only independent, fully integrated logistics company in the industry with multiple touch points across the extended supply chain. We offer in-basin terminals, Arrows Up containers and ShaleTECH Transport to make optimize the movement of proppant. And, OES has the expertise to customize our service offering to exactly what energy companies need in every situation.

The bottom line is that comprehensive end-to-end supply chain systems must  deliver cost saving efficiencies for the energy and mining industries. There aren’t many logistics services companies that can honestly deliver on this goal.

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