Concho Resources Inc. (CXO) is facing delays of several hours to get sand for fracking in the Permian Basin as a drilling boom in West Texas drives up demand and creates delivery bottlenecks. Talk of a sand shortage is most prominent in the Delaware Basin region of the play, Joe Wright, chief operating officer of the Midland, Texas-based company, said on its earnings conference call today. The Permian Basin accounts for 30 percent of the 1,889 active U.S. drilling rigs, according to Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI) “There has been a lot of chatter around sand shortages,” Wright said. “It’s really more of a transportation of sand, or distribution of sand” issue, he said. Wright expects the delays to persist during the next 30 days. The use of sand for fracking in the U.S. and Canada is expected to increase 17 percent a year, reaching 130 billion pounds (59 billion […]