But it’s and that rose up, I don’t think you’re going to see a wild change in the deployment of that going forward. It will continue to grow, but it’s not going to massively move the rig to frac count ratio. Part of it’s just rates of efficiency improvement, both rigs and frac spreads have had great rates of efficiency improvement. The other factor you don’t hear talked about so much is frac intensity it used to move depending on sand prices. Sand prices are high, frac intensity will pull back a little bit. Sand prices are low, frac intensity, you’ll grow. But there’s another factor, which is reservoir and rock quality as we’re gradually drilling lower rock quality, what’s the offset to that? Do you want to accept these production declines nobody does.
So what happens is frac intensity grows to offset. So in the next few years, you’ll see a growth in frac intensity that is trying to offset the balance of slightly lower drilling locations that are being drilled. I’ll give one example. We have a great private customer in the Haynesville used to work for one of the big players in the Haynesville drill in the core acreage. And here they are four or five years later today, their IPs and their EURs of the wells they’re drilling today are almost the same as pretty much the same as the core locations they were drilling five years ago at a different operator, but what do they do? The pounds per foot of sands, the pumping rate and the clusters, they basically increased frac intensity in this case, by factor of three, but that increase in frac intensity offsets a degradation of reservoir quality.
This is a faster degradation because it’s someone who owned the core acreage to someone acquiring not core acreage. But the biggest offset to acreage degradation is frac intensity. So, I’m not worried about all of a sudden we’re going to go to five to one frac fleets to rig, that’s not happening.
Saurabh Pant: Got it. Right. No, that’s fantastic color, Chris. Really appreciate that. And then one quick follow-up. I think you made a comment to somebody’s question, I think you were talking about the Bakken specifically, I think you said you expect the Bakken to keep back up in the second quarter. Any more color on that? Because typically, we think of Bakken, Eagle Ford, some of these relatively older basins as growth, no growth or whatever you want to call it right. So a little bit more color on the Bakken, because you have a unique position over there.
Chris Wright: Yes. It’s just a little bit specific around it. The bottom generally, there’s a number of operators that slowdown in Q1 or don’t do it, but there’s some specific operators sort of doing that in Q1 that’s going to change. Again, I think it was a very busy basin through Q3, slowed down a bit in Q4 and then kind of went off for some winter weather breaks in Q1 and it’s coming back in Q2. It’s good it kind of offset a little bit of the opposite seasonality you get in Canada.
Saurabh Pant: Okay. Okay. It’s more of timing and seasonality more than anything else.
Chris Wright: Yes, Bakken is really one of the basins that has a little bit more of a seasonal character to it than Permian or Haynesville and New Southern Basins would.
Saurabh Pant: Right, right. No, got it. Okay, guys, thank you. Thanks for the answers. I’ll turn it back.
Chris Wright: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. And our last question today comes from Tom Curran with Seaport Research Partners.
Tom Curran: Good morning guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. We’ve already covered the stakes you’ve taken in Fervo and Okloand you’ve shared some helpful context around each of those. So, I guess we should now cover the $5 million investment you’ve made in Natron, would love to hear a similar framing for that, Chris and Ron. And then between the three, there clearly is this growing portfolio of minority equity stakes in early-stage clean energy tech companies that Liberty is building. Chris, you’ve already touched on how you think of Liberty as an energy solutions company, not just an oil and gas one, but there would seem to be a clear broader strategy here, not just opportunistic one-offs. So, could any of these positions expand into something beyond just a financial asset such as a new technology offering or some sort of JV or alliance for Liberty?
Chris Wright: Certainly possible. Certainly possible. What we look at, like we get pitched everything, but if there are things that really look like they have a reasonable chance of great success, and there is some synergy. We can either help them on the road to success or Fervo it’s obvious, it’s services and engineering, we’re doing. There are different ones. Natron is a huge amount of investment in lithium-ion batteries, right, because they have the highest energy density. But they have some fundamental problems. And the worst for us, we use batteries. Think of both digiFrac and digiPrime employ batteries in the field, as temporary storage power mechanisms. digiPrime is a hybrid thing. So it’s moving energy back and forth between batteries, storing and giving power out, sorry, I’m mumbling.
But in case, what’s neat about Natron was that it’s a sodium ion, which I think you’re going to see a lot more of that going forward. It’s just an ion that fits well in the matrix. It can discharge faster. It can recharge faster. It can live longer. It does not have the fire hazard. It has lower power density. So boy, if you’re sending someone to the moon, you have a lower powered entity. So it doesn’t win on everything, but it wins on the things that matter for us, fast discharge, easy to charge, low fire risk like that’s a technology that done well is going to play a role and probably going to play a role in the Liberty world. I don’t know if Ron wants to add anything to it, but I think that…
Ron Gusek: I think Chris covered it well.
Tom Curran: Yes, you’re certainly not alone in your excitement and optimism about the technical advantages of sodium ion among the LIB alternative battery chemistry opted out there. So, I understand where you’re coming from there. And then just with LPI, when it comes to the visible demand underpinning your plans to double capacity by year-end, are you already starting to see non-oil and gas interest emerge from third parties for LPI?
Chris Wright: We’ve had dialogues about that. We’re always away from ready to deploy and do that. We’re not going to do it just to do it, right? It’s got to be, we’ve got to find the opportunities that are compelling economically and that fit our skill set and expertise. We’re still building that skill set and expertise as we’re building those for power plants. But if we engage in dialogue with other parties, absolutely. Is there interest in having more power on grids or for industrial facilities. Absolutely.
Tom Curran: Great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. I’ll turn it back.
Chris Wright: You bet. Thanks so much.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I’ll turn it back to Chris for closing remarks.
Chris Wright: On February 5, Liberty will release our 2024 bettering human lives report. It is significantly expanded from previous versions with more case studies and more topics covered, all in the same centered around data style. Writing this report took up a lot of my holiday vacation, but increasing energy literacy or energy sapriety is critical to our future. Let me give you a taste of just one section called Energy Edition. This section looks carefully at trends in energy production over the last 12 years. Are we in the midst of an energy transition that we hear so much about. The data says that the answer is no. This is not an opinion or a preference. Heck, I work in other areas of energy and began my career in nuclear and solar.
This is simply an honest reading of the data. In 2010, the world consumed a little more than 500 exajoules of energy. 12 years later, in 2022, the world consumed a little less than 600 exajoules of energy. Great progress was made in growing the energy resources available to expand opportunities and better the lives of the world’s eight billion people. What energy sources provided this additional energy beyond the 500 exajoules that we consumed in 2010. The runaway fastest-growing energy source in the world over the last 12 years is natural gas, which supplied roughly 40% of the additional energy over that time period. Fully half of the additional natural gas supply came from the American shale revolution. What was the second fastest-growing source of energy during these 12 years?
