Sand mining. if you are from outside the industry, it sounds like a Star Wars job, something that would be a vocation for a young entrepreneur on Tatooine. Read More
“We realized that government did not fundamentally understand what was holding things up in our industry.”
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“We realized that government did not fundamentally understand what was holding things up in our industry.”
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Sand mining. if you are from outside the industry, it sounds like a Star Wars job, something that would be a vocation for a young entrepreneur on Tatooine.
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“I’m a sand miner, but I also repair droids and practice Jedi mind tricks on the side.”
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And not so long ago, in an Alberta not so far away, sand miners had a wide range of customers. Sand is used to make asphalt and glass. If you’re a golfer and have blasted your way out of a sand trap at a local course, there’s a good chance the stuff you just struggled to get out of came from pits located just north of Edmonton. These pits supply the sand you’ll find in the ashcans at places that still make accommodations for smokers. Mined sand is used to make beach volleyball courts. It cushions kids’ falls when they lose their grips on the monkey bars.
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But, Alberta sand miners had a hard time breaking into the most lucrative market of all – providing “frac sand” to oil and gas producers. The irony is that the customer base is right here in Alberta, but, year after year, about three-quarters of the sand used in fracking is supplied by sand mines south of the border in Wisconsin, while the Alberta players scramble to try and get a bigger share of the market.
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Things changed this past winter, though. Local sand mining has got a major boost, all thanks to Donald Trump.
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The northern white sand that comes from Wisconsin had been the default choice for the industry. Oil and gas companies know that there is a large supply on hand. If tens of thousands of tonnes worth of sand were required, the extractors could count on the steady supply from the American Midwest.
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Then came U.S. President Trump’s promise of tariffs, and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s counter tariffs, which included added costs on “frac sand” that oil and gas producers import from the American Midwest. And questions began to be asked: Was there not a Canadian solution to the sand problem?
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The answer is yes. And the two biggest players in the Alberta sand mining game, Peaskie Minerals and Sil Industrial Minerals, are both in the midst of aggressive expansion projects.
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“The tariffs actually helped us,” said Ron Dorton, the manager of Sil Industrial Minerals, based in Bruderheim, about 54 km north of Edmonton. “It hurts the imports coming in, but it was an eye-opener for the exploration and production people and the pumpers. It got them to start looking at domestic sand.
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“Now we see opportunity. We see growth. Yes, it sucks that there’s tariffs. They did hurt people. But, from our side, it got the industry to take a step back and see what the local guys can do.”
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Keith Arsenault manages Peaskie Minerals’ operations. The Peaskie headquarters are just a couple of minutes’ drive north from the hamlet of Opal, in Thorhild County, about 51 km north of Edmonton.
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Arsenault said there’s enough quality sand in Westlock, Thorhild, Sturgeon and Lac Ste. Anne counties to replace the need for Wisconsin imports.
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“And, here, we don’t have to take the top off a mountain and crush all of the other stuff,” said Arsenault.
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Dorton and Arsenault sat side by side in Peaskie’s boardroom. When Dorton arrived, he was warmly greeted by the receptionist. He knew his way to the boardroom. It’s hard to imagine another business where the head of a rival company is welcomed so warmly in the other firm’s headquarters. But both Arsenault and Dorton see a not-too-far-distant future where they become the big suppliers of frac sand to the Alberta energy sector – and there will be plenty of business to go around.
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Why is sand so important?
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In fracking, the ground is cracked, and then sand is used to keep those cracks from closing so the oil and gas continue to flow. The sand has to be just the right size and consistency.
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There has been an industry-wide acceptance that Wisconsin white sand is the only option. And while that is true for some projects, the majority can use brown sand that’s just the right grain size for fracking.
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So why wasn’t the Canadian sand business overtaking its Wisconsin competitor? Arsenault said there was so much government red tape that it was hard for Canadian firms to guarantee they could fill large-scale orders. If tens of thousands of tonnes were needed for a job, the extractor knew that the American supply would be there, and would be replenished on schedule.
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But when the tariff war erupted, shockwaves went through the fracking business. And, in government, questions began to be asked about why this niche part of the industry was so dependent on the United States. Former Alberta cabinet minister Doug Horner, who sits on Peaskie’s board, worked the phones. Arsenault and Dorton and other industry players met with delegates from Alberta’s environment and forestry ministries. They told the government that current regulations stood in the way of the industry.
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“The tariffs raised the focus on our industry, and questions were asked about why Alberta is not providing more of that product,” said Arsenault.
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For years, Canadian silica sand producers had been asking for some “carve-outs” from the regulations that would allow them to secure more supply and refine the material more quickly. Now, they had the provincial government’s collective ear.
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“Everything dramatically changed,” said Arsenault. “We realized that government did not fundamentally understand what was holding things up in our industry. We were handcuffing ourselves. They’ve definitely uncuffed us, for sure.”
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In late May, the provincial government announced the formation of a Sand and Gravel Task Force. It is expected to work for six months on how to balance environmental protection with the need to reduce red tape.
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“Sand, gravel and crushed stone play important roles in keeping people working and our economy growing,” said Ryan Fournier, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas. “Landowners and operators have consistently voiced frustration that excessive red tape is creating unnecessary barriers to development and slowing down the delivery of sand and gravel to market.
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“In May, Alberta launched a new task force to recommend ways to cut red tape and accelerate regulatory processes for sand and gravel operations while maintaining the province’s world-class environmental standards. This work is underway, and we look forward to the task force’s recommendations.”
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Mining also takes place on leased public land. And there were issues there, too.
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Arsenault said that currently, if his company has a mineral lease on an 80-acre parcel of public land, another 80-acre plot would not be granted until the first one was not only fully mined, but also reclaimed. A company couldn’t be finishing with one lease, and already started on the next.
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So, the irony is that the more a company tries to ramp up supply, “it handcuffs you,” in Arsenault’s words. And the stop-start way of doing things didn’t make the oil and gas industry confident that domestic players could supply sand on a consistent basis, like the Wisconsin producers could.
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Production numbers are rising
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Arsenault said that Peaskie sold a steady 600,000 tonnes of frac sand a year. That jumped to 1 million tonnes in 2024, and it’s expecting to sell 1.4 million tonnes in 2025.
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“And since we’ve seen the promised regulatory changes, and the cooperation from two government ministries, the ownership here has decided on a major expansion project,” said Arsenault.
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That includes buying up 960 acres of land in Westlock County, roughly 90 km north of Edmonton, and adding production facilities there. There are pit leases on additional 560 acres of land in the county.
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“Westlock County is proud to support Peaskie Minerals and the broader industrial mineral sector as a cornerstone of economic development in our region,” said Christine Wiese, the reeve of Westlock County. “We believe in creating a strong foundation for business investment through predictable governance, collaborative partnerships and timely infrastructure support. Peaskie’s success is a reflection of what can be accomplished when local government and private enterprise work together to grow rural Alberta.”
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“If someone would have called us a year ago and asked for three million tonnes of domestic sand, it didn’t exist,” said Arsenault. “Well, actually, it did exist, but the capacity to produce it wasn’t there. The approvals to mine it weren’t there. All those pieces of the puzzle weren’t in place. But now, what I think you are going to see, for us, by January 2026 there’s an opportunity you can have an additional 2.5 million tonnes worth of supply on the market in the addition to the 25 per cent of the market that the domestic producers have now.”
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If that were to happen, Canadian suppliers would go from supplying 25 per cent of the Canadian demand to filling half the market by 2026.
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The expansion plans
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After sand is mined, it goes through an industrial washing process. Then, it sits in man-made dunes for at least a month, to get rid of some of that moisture. Then, it’s put through a dryer before it’s ready for use.
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Dorton said that last year, Sil’s dryers ran at about half of their potential capacity. This year, a new dryer was added to the company’s inventory. The company can now dry up to 2.5 million tonnes of sand a year.
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Sil has 140 full-time staff. There are also subcontractors, drivers and 60 seasonal workers. There are 80 to 90 seasonal truck drivers and 200 year-round vehicle operators. But, some of those seasonal jobs are expanding to full-time because of the added demand for sand.
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Peaskie’s expansion plans could see it producing three million tonnes of sand by 2026. It is in the process of adding a new storage tent which will add 38,000 tonnes of capacity, nearly tripling the company’s warehousing capacity. It currently has 180 full-time workers.
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“The two of us could have been doing a million tonnes a year (of frac sand) a year, any year that they needed,” said Dorton, as he motioned across the table to Arsenault. “But, at the end of the day, it was all import sand being used. And the local guys were just sitting here with a lot of space.”
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“The biggest issue for E and Ps not using domestic sand was always the security of supply,” said Arsenault. “And the pad sizes have increased. Years ago, if you required 10,000 tonnes of sand over a 10-day period, that was a big pad. Now the pads are 50,60, 70,000 tonnes. They want 7,000 tonnes a day. It’s not just about what you can produce at the mine, and if you can wash what you mine and can dry what you mine, it’s also about your network. It’s about the transload capacity to get the sand to those markets.”
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He said expected changes to the approvals process and the public-land lease rules will “blow the doors off” the Canadian sand business. Both Peaskie and Sil have reserves in the range of 120-150 million tonnes, but previously that didn’t mean a whole heck of a lot. Now, changes will mean they can unlock a lot of the land’s potential.
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“It’s one thing to have proven reserves. It’s another thing to have reserves that are actually permitted to be developed,” said Arsenault. “Those are two different equations.”
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