This ‘Dune’ Isn't Fiction. It's the Longest Conveyer Belt in the US and Moving Sand in Texas
owl writes:
It's longer than the width of Rhode Island, snakes across the oil fields of the southwest U.S. and crawls at 10 mph - too slow for a truck and too long for a train.
It's a new sight: the longest conveyer belt in America.
Atlas Energy Solutions, a Texas-based oil field company, has installed a 42-mile long (67 kilometers) conveyer belt to transport millions of tons of sand for hydraulic fracturing. The belt the company named "The Dune Express" runs from tiny Kermit, Texas, and across state borders into Lea County, New Mexico. Tall and lanky with lids that resemble solar modules, the steel structure could almost be mistaken for a roller coaster.
In remote West Texas, there are few people to marvel at the unusual machine in Kermit, a city with a population of less than 6,000, where the sand is typically hauled by tractor-trailers. During fracking, liquid is pumped into the ground at a high pressure to create holes, or fractures, that release oil. The sand helps keep the holes open as water, oil and gas flow through it.
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