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"Earlier this week, we posed a one-question survey to Infill Thinking members:\r\nOn a scale of 1-5, how important is sand quality in the proppant procurement decision?\r\nToday, the results are in with 40 Infill Thinking members chiming in. If you shared your views, thank you!\r\n\r\nWe published the results in three reports. Below is the data charted and you can find the executive summary here and the comments here.\r\nData\r\nWe looked at the data through four filters - just the E&amp;Ps,  just the sand providers, just the logistics folks, and the full sample. The survey is anonymous but we do ask what role our respondents play because filtering out answers by participant type yields deeper insights.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Full Sample\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAverage answer was a 3.3. Most popular answer was 3, and 5 got more votes than 1.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Just The E&amp;Ps\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nNearly unanimously 5s from buyers - they say quality matters! We were a bit surprised on this given what we hear at the field level, but thinking more about it, of course quality matters to buyers. What is the definition of quality would be a good follow-up question to dig deeper. If the E&amp;Ps generally have a lower spec tolerance than say 5 years ago, but still adhere to that spec requirement, then obviously quality matters to them. There is a limit to how far down the spectrum they will go. And once buyers have identified partners that can meet their required spec, then it makes sense that most of the negotiation discussions could revolve around price and logistics even though buyers don't see themselves sacrificing incremental quality as they negotiate with suppliers.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Just The Sand Providers\r\n\r\nAverage answer (3.3) was the same as the total survey, however we saw many more 3s and fewer extremes from the sand producers than in the overall result. To us this goes hand-in-hand with our analysis of just the E&amp;P results in the prior chart. The discussion sand providers probably have more often than not with buyers involves price and logistics rather than quality if E&amp;Ps have decided on their quality tolerance and then engage the vendor universe that they believe can meet their requirements about other procurement variables. It also shows that sand providers who once built capacity to meet higher specs 5-10 years ago, would think quality has stopped mattering as much given the general downward trend in spec requirements and appetite for product coming from deposits that were once deemed unacceptable.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Just The Logistics Firms\r\n\r\nAverage answer (2.2) was the lowest of all industry segment responses. This likely reflects what they see moving to the wellsite, which has been moving down the quality spectrum over the past five years from NWS (and some resin and ceramics) to large scale local sand plants, to lower capex plants (new entrants, industrial plant conversions, proximity mines and wet sand, more filter pods / rock catchers deploying, etc.).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAlso See:\r\n The Comments\r\n\r\nThe Executive Summary"
<https://www.infillthinking.com/out-think/does-sand-quality-matter-survey-results-part-2-data/>