Oil and Gas Terms Beginning with “B” — Page 7

Blended crude (also called a crude blend , blended stream , or quality bank crude ) is a petroleum product created by combining two or more crude oil streams of different densities, viscosities, sulphur contents, or… Read more →

Blender in hydraulic fracturing operations is a high-capacity surface mixing unit that combines proppant (dry sand or ceramic beads), base fracturing fluid (slickwater, linear gel, or crosslinked gel), and chemical… Read more →

Blind box (also called a blind cap , blind flange cap , or port plug ) is a solid, pressure-rated fitting installed on an unused or temporarily inactive outlet port of a BOP stack body, wellhead assembly, choke… Read more →

Blind ram (also called a blind preventer ram or, when combined with shear capability, a blind-shear ram ) is a solid, heavy-steel closing element installed inside a ram-type blowout preventer (BOP) to seal the wellbore… Read more →

Blind zone (also called dead zone , end effect zone , or measurement shadow ) in wireline logging and logging-while-drilling (LWD) is a depth interval at the top or bottom of a logged section, immediately below a casing… Read more →

In petroleum engineering and operations, block has two distinct and frequently used meanings that share no technical relationship but appear throughout oilfield documentation and conversation without differentiation:… Read more →

Blockage in petroleum flow systems is any solid, semi-solid, or structured deposit that significantly restricts or completely stops the movement of reservoir fluids through a wellbore, production tubing string,… Read more →

Blow-down (also spelled blowdown , and sometimes called system depressurization or controlled venting ) is the deliberate, controlled release of pressurized gas, vapor, condensate-liquid mixture, or wellbore fluid from… Read more →

Blow-out (also written as blowout ) in petroleum drilling and well operations is the uncontrolled release of formation fluids from a wellbore when the driving pressure of the reservoir — or of a shallower high-pressure… Read more →

A blow-out preventer ( BOP ) is a high-pressure valve assembly installed on the wellhead at the base of the derrick to seal, control, or completely shut in a wellbore if formation fluids begin to flow uncontrollably —… Read more →

Blowdown in reservoir engineering refers to the primary recovery mechanism — or deliberate recovery strategy — in which a gas reservoir, gas condensate reservoir, or gas cap is produced by allowing reservoir pressure to… Read more →

A blowdy (also spelled blowdie , and sometimes called a portable blowdown assembly or field blowdown unit ) is an informal term used in Canadian and Northern Plains oilfield operations for a portable, temporary venting… Read more →

Blowing the drip is the routine field operation of venting accumulated liquid from a drip pot (also called a line drip , trap , or low-point accumulator ) — a small-diameter vessel or enlarged pipe section installed at… Read more →

A blowout — the uncontrolled flow of formation fluids from a wellbore after all primary and secondary well barriers have been overwhelmed — requires a specialized well control response that goes far beyond the driller's… Read more →

A blowout preventer ( BOP ) is the high-pressure valve system installed at the wellhead before drilling through any zone with the potential to kick — the mechanical layer in the well's safety barrier system that can… Read more →

A body wave is a seismic wave that propagates through the interior of a solid or fluid medium — as opposed to surface waves that travel along an interface — carrying elastic energy outward from the seismic source… Read more →

In oilfield operations, a bomb is the colloquial term for any self-contained downhole instrument package run into a wellbore to record or retrieve reservoir data without requiring a real-time surface readout — most… Read more →

The cement bond log ( CBL ) is a wireline acoustic logging measurement used to evaluate the quality of the cement bond between the steel casing and the surrounding formation — the physical barrier that isolates… Read more →

Bonus consideration (also called a land bonus , bonus bid , or simply the bonus ) is the upfront cash payment made by a successful bidder at a Crown land sale to acquire the right to explore for, develop, and produce… Read more →

A booster in petroleum operations is any intermediate facility, device, or chemical that supplements the capacity of a primary system — adding pressure, chemical performance, or explosive output beyond what the primary… Read more →

A borehole is the cylindrical void created in the earth by the drilling process, extending from the surface to the total depth of the well and bounded by the formation rock (in open-hole sections) or by the inside of… Read more →

Borehole compensation refers to the design feature of a wireline sonic logging tool — and by extension, the measurement technique — that cancels the effect of borehole diameter variations, tool eccentricity, and… Read more →

Borehole corrections (also called environmental corrections or log corrections ) are quantitative adjustments applied to raw wireline log readings to remove the systematic measurement errors introduced by the borehole… Read more →

Borehole gravity is the measurement of the Earth's gravitational acceleration at successive depth stations inside a wellbore using a high-precision downhole gravimeter — a geophysical technique that derives the average… Read more →

The borehole gravity meter (also called a downhole gravimeter or borehole gravimeter ) is a specialized, pressure-rated geophysical instrument run into a wellbore on wireline to measure the Earth's gravitational… Read more →

Borehole seismic data encompasses any seismic measurement acquired with at least one component of the source-receiver system placed inside a wellbore, exploiting the shorter travel path, reduced surface noise… Read more →

A borehole televiewer is a wireline logging tool that generates a continuous, oriented, 360° image of the borehole wall by recording either the acoustic reflectivity of the formation surface (the acoustic or ultrasonic… Read more →

The bottle test is a field and laboratory procedure for evaluating the effectiveness of chemical demulsifiers in separating crude oil and produced water from a stable emulsion — a test method that determines which… Read more →

The bottom log interval (BLI) is the deepest formation interval captured on the wireline log suite of a wellbore — the section between the lowest logged depth (which may stop at the top of the next casing string, at the… Read more →

A bottom sample is a crude oil or petroleum liquid specimen collected from the lowest accessible point in a storage tank, pipeline sample point, or wellbore fluid column, used in custody transfer, quality analysis, and… Read more →