With safety, sustainability, and community at the core of everything it does, Signal Peak Silica continues to make strides in providing high-quality frac sand closer to the end user. We sit down with President, Chris Samanns, who tells us more.
PEAK PERFORMANCE
Chris Samanns, President of Signal Peak Silica (SPS), was first introduced to the mining industry in 2012 when his brother referred him to an open position at Preferred Sands (Preferred) – the predecessor company of SPS.
“At the time, my brother was working in the accounting department and referred me to an open supply chain position,” he introduces.
A commercial real estate firm turned mining company, Preferred was initially headquartered in suburban Pennsylvania.
The company began operating within the mining space after purchasing an aggregate plant in Florida with the intention of developing real estate there – but instead decided to keep the plant and pivot back toward mining.
Later, it was introduced to a frac sand opportunity in Nebraska, and in 2007, purchased this plant before quickly acquiring additional frac sand locations across Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Saskatchewan.
“By the time I started at the company in 2012, all five of these locations were operational along with a resin coating and chemicals business servicing the oil and gas industry,” he reveals.
HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING
Despite having limited knowledge of the mining or oil and gas industries, Samanns learned fast and took to the company culture, rapidly climbing the ladder.
“While I began in supply chain operations with a focus on moving sand from our plants to rail transload facilities, I soon took on sales responsibilities for the Eagle Ford Shale (Eagle Ford) and Mid-Continent (Midcon) basins,” Samanns reflects.
After this, he oversaw sales, customer service, logistics, planning, and supply chain activities before assuming a General Manager position in late 2015 with profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities for the company’s sand business.
This came at a time of rapidly declining oil prices, which led to customers requiring lower operating costs to sustain their activity – often abandoning prior norms in order to achieve this.
As such, Samanns identified a gap in the market for in-basin sand locations that did not require expensive rail hauls to reach areas of activity.
Eventually, Preferred settled on the Permian, Eagle Ford, and Midcon basins, where he oversaw aggressive contracting and made plans to finance the construction of plants.
“We broke ground on our Monahans and Poteet plants in the Permian and Eagle Ford basins in mid-2017, with customer contracts supporting over 80 percent of the capacity at each,” Samanns shares.
A year later, the company opened the Oakwood plant in Oklahoma (OK) – the first in-basin plant in the Western OK area.
“Unfortunately, we had some issues with construction cost overruns, operational start-up, and reaching production capacity targets. Ultimately, this led to a restructuring in early 2019 when the company was split into two distinct organizations with different ownership – Preferred and SPS,” he tells us.
Preferred maintained the rail-based assets and technology business, while SPS and its investors assumed ownership and operation of the three in-basin plant assets in Monahans, Texas (TX), Poteet, TX and Oakwood, OK.
Upon formation, SPS was headquartered in Houston where Samanns now serves as President.
RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
Within a year of SPS’s formation, the company had successfully stabilized its existing plants and ramped up operations to target larger capacities – just in time to enter the difficult years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During this period, we had to fight to stay in business – we leaned out, cut costs, worked with our customers and negotiated flexibility with vendors,” Samanns recalls.
As a result, the company was able to sustain operations across all three of its plants against all odds. SPS also made a strong recovery from COVID-19 thanks to its retention of key personnel, which meant it didn’t need to be re-built from scratch.
“We continued to grow back volumes throughout 2021 and into the following year, eventually drawing interest in the success of our Monahans facility.”
SPS ultimately sold this plant to ProFrac Holding Corp. (ProFrac) in 2022 while continuing operations at Poteet and Oakwood.
“Following the sale of Monahans, we re-invested in the business, expanding capacity at our remaining plants through multiple improvement projects,” he affirms.
The company also identified two new plant opportunities in Dover, OK and Carrizo Springs, TX, which opened in 2023 and 2024 respectively, with the latter’s greenfield site already having undergone expansion this July.
Therefore, SPS today boasts approximately 300 employees across its four plants and corporate team.
AN EVOLVING INDUSTRY
As the US oil and gas industry continues to see constant innovation, Samanns has taken pleasure in watching it evolve over the course of his career.
“Early on, I was able to witness the growth of horizontal wells in place of verticals, the advent of slickwater fracturing techniques, the evolution of proppant selection, and increases in well lateral lengths and proppant intensity,” he notes.
In more recent years post-COVID-19, there have been continual equipment and efficiency advances with rigs drilling over a mile per day, frac crews operating close to 24 hours per day, and new simultaneous fracking (simul-frac) techniques allowing for multiple wells to be completed at the same time.
All these developments have allowed US oil and gas production to increase rapidly while also enabling the industry to mature and evolve.
“There has been a wave of consolidation to preserve runway of premium well inventory and a focus on investor returns and not just growth,” Samanns observes.
Going forward, SPS thinks it will continue to see the bifurcation of gas-centric and oil-centric activity.
Areas which focus primarily on oil, meanwhile, are expected to witness the curve of demand flatten, while gas-focused regions will continue to see growth as liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity and power generation demand increases.
“In the sand industry specifically, certain regions have very low barriers to entry and are easily overbuilt for the demand,” he adds.
The Permian basin is a great example of this, with over 50 sand plants existing there and pricing compressed as demand has fallen.
“We benefit from our competitive position and focus on the Eagle Ford and Midcon basins because we have a balanced commodity exposure with lots of gassier acreage, and our barrier to entry is higher given more difficult reserves in South TX and OK versus West Texas,” Samanns assesses.
SAFETY AND SERVICE QUALITY
Differentiated by its service quality, SPS focuses first and foremost on the safety of its employees, vendors, and customers.
“Safety is our number one business value, and it’s how we start every meeting – the guiding principle upholding every decision we make.
“We have signs everywhere that say, ‘Nothing you do on this site today will be as important as going home to your family and loved ones’,” Samanns explains.
Secondly, the company strives to be extremely reliable and always deliver on its promises, while it does an incredible job coordinating information between its sales and operations teams.
SPS also has best-in-class reliability and uptime – with sand presenting a very difficult working environment, the company does a ton of preventative maintenance, QC sampling, trend analysis, and is not afraid to invest in capital to keep its equipment functional.
The company’s most recent project was the expansion of its Carrizo Springs facility, adding an additional 750,000 tons (t) of annual dry plant capacity.
“From an execution standpoint, this was an extremely impressive project that I am proud of our team for completing,” he enthuses.
Having utilized the dryer at another facility for six months, SPS pivoted and moved its operations to Carrizo Springs, setting it up in just two weeks.
“It was an extremely difficult ask, but our team responded well and knew it was important to meet the needs of our customers.”
Going forward, SPS is excited to offer additional capacity in the southern Eagle Ford, delivering on market needs as gas exports continue to grow.
“The southern Eagle Ford gas play has some of the lowest gas extraction break-evens in the US and is well situated for Mexico exports and access to the Gulf Coast,” Samanns details.
“Safety is our number one business value, and it’s how we start every meeting – the guiding principle upholding every decision we make”
Chris Samanns, President, Signal Peak Silica
A PARTNER OF CHOICE
SPS is focused on being a responsible and receptive community partner, with an employee base that hails almost entirely from the communities that surround it.
“Without a strong relationship locally, we wouldn’t be the company we are today,” Samanns states.
As such, SPS sponsors local schools, charities, and fundraisers each year.
It also has its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics evaluated annually, allowing the company to learn about the impact of its operations on the broader ESG landscape.
This process also enables SPS to identify areas in which it can improve its environmental footprint, strengthen customer and community relations, and be a better partner to local stakeholders in South TX and OK.
Being a forward-looking, data-driven company, SPS values partnerships where new technologies and insights can be brought to the table – such as those offered by KCF Technologies (KCF).
As partners for the majority of SPS’s operational history, KCF has supported the company’s safety culture and operational reliability by providing additional insights into critical equipment.
This has helped SPS identify changes in equipment conditions to reduce potential safety hazards and get ahead of failures – both reducing incidents and increasing reliability.
“Without a strong relationship locally, we wouldn’t be the company we are today”
Chris Samanns, President, Signal Peak Silica
IN SAFE HANDS
As an operations-first company, SPS promotes a culture of listening to and supporting its employees, recognizing their achievements through a variety of programs.
Most recently, it started a Safety Sentinel award program where it recognizes individual employees who embody the company’s safety culture.
SPS’s leadership, meanwhile, continually strives to proactively improve safety by operating with the health and well-being of its personnel at the forefront.
“All employees, contractors, and visitors are expected to work injury-free. Everyone is empowered to stop the normal course of operations if they feel their safety – or the safety of others – is being compromised,” Samanns tells us.
Key components of the company’s ‘Safety as a Value’ principles include empowerment, ownership, risk assessment, training, workplace observations and examinations, alongside near miss reporting.
“Employees are responsible for understanding the impact their decisions make during their day-to-day work routines,” he continues.
As such, each team member is expected to independently apply and support ‘Safety as a Value’ in their actions and behaviors.
Looking ahead, meeting customers’ requirements and continuing the safe operation of its facilities are among SPS’s key priorities.
“If the market needs us to grow, we will be ready to meet the needs of our customers, but we are generally expecting a flat year-on-year trend given market dynamics.
“We have no immediate expansion plans, but are always interested in pursuing new opportunities,” Samanns concludes.
SIGNAL PEAK SILICA PARTNER
