Oil and Gas Terms Beginning with “B” — Page 10

A solution used in analyses to hold pH at or above or below a certain value, as in the titration for magnesium versus calcium ions. Read more →

What Is a Buggy Vibro? Buggy vibro (also called a vibroseis truck, vibrator unit, or seismic vibrator) is a heavy land seismic acquisition vehicle that generates controlled seismic energy by pressing a steel baseplate… Read more →

What Is a Buildup Test? A buildup test (BU or PBU — pressure buildup test) is a well test in which a producing well is shut in after a period of production, and the subsequent rise in bottomhole pressure is measured and… Read more →

What Is Bulk Modulus? The bulk modulus (K) is a measure of a material's resistance to uniform compression — it quantifies how much pressure must be applied to reduce a material's volume by a given fraction.… Read more →

What Is Bulk Relaxation? Bulk relaxation (also called free fluid relaxation or volumetric relaxation ) is the longitudinal (T1) or transverse (T2) nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation of hydrogen nuclei occurring… Read more →

What Is Bulk Volume? Bulk volume (abbreviated BV ) is the total volume of a rock sample or formation interval, encompassing both the solid grain matrix and all pore space within it. Bulk volume is the fundamental… Read more →

What Is a Bull Plug? Bull plug is a solid threaded plug used to seal the open end of a pipe, fitting, or wellhead outlet by threading into the female (box) connection and blocking all fluid flow through that connection.… Read more →

What Is Bullet Perforating? Bullet perforating is a well completion technique in which hardened steel projectiles — bullets — are fired radially outward through the casing wall and cement sheath into the formation by a… Read more →

To forcibly pump fluids into a formation, usually formation fluids that have entered the wellbore during a well control event. Though bullheading is intrinsically risky, it is performed if the formation fluids are… Read more →

What Does It Mean to Bump the Plug? Bumping the plug (also called plug bump or seating the plug ) is the critical event in a primary cementing operation when the top wiper plug — driven down the inside of the casing… Read more →

Several pipes (production or injection, gas lift) that are jointly insulated to keep together production lines. The bundle minimizes heat transfer and avoids hydrate or wax deposition that could plug the pipelines.… Read more →

The upward force acting on an object placed in a fluid. The buoyancy force is equal to the weight of fluid displaced by the object. Buoyancy can have significant effects over a wide range of completion and workover… Read more →

What Is the Buoyancy Method? Buoyancy method (also called the buoyancy factor method ) is a drill string weight calculation approach that accounts for the reduction in apparent weight of submerged tubulars caused by the… Read more →

What Is a Burn-Over? Burn-over (also called a burn shoe operation or cable severance job ) is a wellsite intervention in which a drill string equipped with a hollow milling shoe is run over a stuck wireline cable in the… Read more →

The use of a mill or burn shoe to remove the outside area of a permanent downhole tool or fish. Burning over the obstruction provides a profile on which fishing or retrieval tools can be engaged to pull the obstruction… Read more →

What Is a Butt Weld? Butt weld (also called a butt joint weld or full-penetration groove weld ) is a fusion weld that joins two pipe sections end-to-end at their beveled pipe faces, forming the primary structural and… Read more →

A plot representing the effect of invasion on resistivity measurements that have different depths of investigation. The plot assumes a step profilemodel of invasion and determines true resistivity, flushed zone… Read more →

What Is Button Resistivity? Button resistivity (also called focused button resistivity or azimuthal resistivity ) is a shallow-reading resistivity measurement made by logging-while-drilling (LWD) tools using small,… Read more →

What Is a Buttress Thread? Buttress thread (also called BTC — Buttress Thread and Coupling ) is an API-standardized casing thread form defined in API Specification 5B, characterized by a trapezoidal thread profile in… Read more →

What Is By-Weight-of-Blend? By-weight-of-blend (also called BWOB, blend weight basis, or total dry blend basis) is a method of expressing cement slurry additive concentrations as a mass percentage of the total dry blend… Read more →

What Is By Weight of Cement (BWOC)? By weight of cement (BWOC) is the standard dosing convention for dry cement additives in oil well cementing operations — expressing additive concentration as a percentage of the dry… Read more →

Describing the amount (in percent) of a material added to a cementslurry based on the weight of water used to mix the slurry. Commonly abbreviated as BWOW, this convention normally is used only for salt [NaCl]. Read more →

The act of passing the mud around a piece of equipment, such as passing mud returns around the shale shaker screens or going around a hydrocyclone device. From a mud-engineering viewpoint, this can be a bad practice… Read more →

What Is Bypass Velocity? Bypass velocity is the average annular velocity of cement slurry or spacer fluid as it flows past and around the drilling mud column in the annulus during primary cementing operations —… Read more →

What Is Bypassed Mud? Bypassed mud (also called mud channeling or cement channeling) is a primary cementing failure in which the cement slurry flows preferentially through one side of the annular space while leaving… Read more →