I am not a drilling completions guy, I work facility construction but I have seen many of these open tanks used on fracs throughout the pembina cardium area. Secondary contaiment they are not, they are utilized for a week or two on location, then moved to the next wellsite. I guess they are more efficient and lower cost than hauling in thirty or forty 400 bbl tanks. Ask your drilling consultant friends their opinion as I am not 100% sure how economical they are.

They are used here on the cardium fracs which are all sweet, I imagine they are used throughout the Bakken as well. The first one I saw was last winter in the -44 celsius and at that temperature I imagine the ice starts to build on the sides, we used to use a hot oiler 20 yrs ago to warm up the frac tanks.

They say that it has taken the last 50 yrs to extract 1.5 billion barrels of oil out of the Pembina Cardium. They figure with the new frac technology they should be able to pull out another 2 billion barrels possibly. My guess is this wont happen overnight and they will be drilling for quite a few years to come. There will still be another 10 billion barrels left in the ground for when they get some new tecnology, most likely CO2 injection.