Oil and Gas Terms Beginning with “B” — Page 5

A basket in oil and gas operations refers to a category of downhole tools or surface equipment designed to collect, retain, or contain solid objects, debris, or produced materials within a wellbore or at the surface… Read more →

The basket flowmeter is a production logging tool used to measure the in-situ velocity of fluid flow inside a producing or injecting wellbore by diverting the wellbore fluid through a centrally mounted spinner turbine.… Read more →

A batch mixer (also called a recirculating mixer or pre-mix unit) is a cementing equipment unit that prepares an entire volume of cement slurry in a single batch before pumping begins, as opposed to a continuous (jet)… Read more →

Batch treatment (also called slug treatment or intermittent chemical treatment) is the practice of injecting a concentrated, discrete volume of chemical into a wellbore, pipeline, or production system at scheduled… Read more →

The bathyal zone is the oceanic realm between 200 m (656 ft) and 2,000 m (6,562 ft) water depth, encompassing the continental slope and the upper portion of the continental rise. It sits intermediate between the neritic… Read more →

In Western Canadian oil and gas operations, a battery is a surface production facility where fluid from one or more producing wells is gathered, metered, separated into oil, gas, and water phases, treated, and prepared… Read more →

A battery site is the physical location where a conventional oil and gas production battery is constructed, including the pad or lease area, all surface equipment, access roads, containment berms, and the subsurface… Read more →

A bead tracer (also called a radioactive bead tracer , tracer bead survey , or bullet tracer ) is a discrete radioactive or chemically tagged particle used in production logging and injection profiling to identify fluid… Read more →

In oil production engineering, the beam refers to the walking beam — the long horizontal steel structural member that forms the central reciprocating element of a sucker-rod pumping unit (commonly called a pumpjack,… Read more →

A beam pump (also called a sucker-rod pump , rod pump , or colloquially a pumpjack system ) is an artificial lift installation comprising three integrated mechanical subsystems: a surface walking beam pumping unit (the… Read more →

A bean (also called a choke bean , choke orifice , or choke insert ) is a hardened, precisely machined cylindrical or conical plug with a central drilled or ground orifice that is inserted into a choke body at the… Read more →

A bean choke (also called a production choke , wellhead choke , orifice choke , or simply a choke ) is a fixed or adjustable flow restriction device installed in the wellhead Christmas tree, production manifold, or… Read more →

A bed (also called a stratum in formal geological usage, or a layer in informal usage) is the fundamental unit of lithostratigraphy — the smallest division of sedimentary rock that is recognizable in outcrop or wellbore… Read more →

Bed thickness is the spatial dimension of a sedimentary layer measured perpendicular to the bounding bedding planes that define its upper and lower surfaces. In the geometrically ideal case where beds are horizontal and… Read more →

A bed wrap (also called a crossed wrap , over-wrap , or bridging wrap ) is a condition where coiled tubing wound on the reel drum becomes physically disordered — an upper layer of tubing rides over, under, or between… Read more →

Bedrock is the continuous mass of solid, consolidated rock that underlies the surficial unconsolidated deposits — glacial till, alluvium, colluvium, peat, aeolian sand, and other Quaternary-age sediments — that blanket… Read more →

The bel (symbol B) is the unit of measurement for the ratio of two acoustic or electrical power quantities, defined as the base-10 logarithm of the ratio: 1 bel = log10(P1/P2), where P1 and P2 are the two power… Read more →

A bell nipple (also called a mud return nipple , flow nipple , or mud return sub ) is a short, flared tubular fitting installed at the top of the blowout preventer (BOP) stack — or at the surface casing head before the… Read more →

The belt effect (also called permeability channeling , thief zone bypass , or high-perm streak breakthrough ) is a waterflood and enhanced recovery phenomenon in which injected fluid — water, gas, polymer, or chemical… Read more →

A benchmark in petroleum industry usage has three related but distinct meanings: a benchmark crude oil (a reference grade whose price sets the basis for pricing all other crudes internationally), a benchmark well (a… Read more →

Beneficiation in the oil sands context refers to the suite of physical, thermal, and chemical separation processes used to extract and concentrate bitumen from mined oil sands ore — transforming raw material that is… Read more →

The term benthic (from the Greek "benthos," meaning depth of the sea) refers to the ecological zone at, on, or immediately above the bottom of a body of water — from shallow tidal flats to the deepest oceanic trenches —… Read more →

Bentonite is a naturally occurring smectite clay mineral composed predominantly of sodium montmorillonite (Na-montmorillonite), a 2:1 phyllosilicate clay with exceptional capacity to absorb water into its crystal… Read more →

Bias in petroleum engineering and geoscience refers to a systematic, directional tendency in a measurement, model prediction, or decision process that consistently offsets results away from the true value in one… Read more →

A bias weld (also called a spiral weld , helical seam weld , or HSAW seam ) is the continuously helical weld joint produced when a flat steel strip is fed at an oblique angle into a forming mill, spirally wound into a… Read more →

Bicarbonate contamination ( HCO3- contamination , also called carbonate contamination or CO2 contamination ) is the introduction of bicarbonate ions (HCO3-) into a water-based drilling fluid system at concentrations… Read more →

A bicenter bit (also spelled bicentre bit , and sometimes called an eccentric underreaming bit or underreaming PDC bit ) is a specialized drill bit with two offset cutting structures — a central pilot bit and an… Read more →

A bid and study agreement ( B&SA , also called a bid preparation agreement , tender development agreement , or study agreement ) is a pre-contract commercial arrangement in which an operator or project owner agrees to… Read more →

A big-hole charge (also called a large-entry charge , big-bore charge , or high-flow perforating charge ) is a shaped explosive charge specifically engineered to maximize the diameter of the perforation entry hole… Read more →

Big-hole perforating charge selection for hydraulic fracturing initiation in Western Canada Sedimentary Basin Montney and Duvernay horizontal completions focuses on the relationship between perforation entrance hole… Read more →