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

Polyanionic lignin is a chemically modified lignin used as a fluid-loss control additive in water-base drilling muds, valued for the combination of salt tolerance and temperature tolerance that lets it function in harsh… Read more →

Polyglycerol refers to a family of polymeric alcohols built from repeating glycerol units, where glycerol itself, C3H5(OH)3, known as glycerin in North American usage, is the simplest single-molecule member. As glycerol… Read more →

What Is a Polymer in Drilling Fluids? A polymer, in the context of drilling fluids, is a large-molecule compound made from repeating monomer units that functions as a viscosifier, fluid-loss control agent, shale… Read more →

What Is Polymer Flooding? Polymer flooding is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method in which water-soluble polymer — typically partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (HPAM) or xanthan biopolymer — is dissolved in the… Read more →

What Is a Polymer Plug? Polymer plug (also called a gel plug or polymer gel treatment) is a temporary or permanent barrier created by injecting a crosslinked polymer gel or high-viscosity polymer solution into the… Read more →

A polyol in petroleum drilling and completion fluids is a class of water-soluble organic compounds containing multiple hydroxyl (-OH) groups used as shale inhibitors, lubricants, and penetration enhancers in water-based… Read more →

Polysaccharides are high-molecular-weight carbohydrate polymers composed of monosaccharide (simple sugar) units linked by glycosidic bonds — in oil and gas drilling and completion applications, polysaccharides are used… Read more →

A pony rod is a short sucker rod, made in standard lengths well below the roughly 25 or 30 foot length of a full rod, that is run in a rod pumped well to make up the total rod string to the exact length required to… Read more →

Pooling is the combination of two or more smaller tracts of land, owned or leased by different parties, into a single area large enough to satisfy a regulator's well-spacing requirement so that one well can be… Read more →

A poppet valve is a type of check valve, meaning a valve that permits flow in one direction and closes automatically to block flow in the reverse direction. Its name comes from its moving element, a plug or disc,… Read more →

A pore is a discrete void within a rock, the empty space between or within mineral grains that can hold air, water, hydrocarbons, or any other fluid. Pores are the fundamental storage units of every conventional… Read more →

What Is Pore Pressure? Pore pressure (also called formation pressure or reservoir pressure) is the pressure of the fluid contained in the pore space of a rock formation. At hydrostatic conditions (normal pore pressure),… Read more →

What Is a Pore Throat? Pore throat (also called pore constriction or pore neck) is the narrow opening that connects two adjacent pore bodies in a porous rock, forming the bottleneck through which fluids must pass to… Read more →

What Is Pore Pressure Gradient? Pore pressure gradient (also called formation pressure gradient or fluid pressure gradient) is the rate of change of formation pore fluid pressure with depth, expressed in pounds per… Read more →

Pore-pressure transmission in drilling engineering is the process by which the pressure of the drilling fluid filtrate invading a formation through the wellbore wall propagates into the formation's pore space over time,… Read more →

A porosimeter is a laboratory instrument that measures the porosity and pore volume of a rock sample by quantifying the relationship between its bulk volume, grain volume, and pore volume, with the principal types being… Read more →

What Is Porosity? Porosity measures the fraction of a rock's bulk volume occupied by void spaces, expressed as a decimal or percentage, and directly controls how much fluid a reservoir can store. Petrophysicists and… Read more →

The porosity exponent, designated m in the Archie equation, is a dimensionless number that quantifies how the tortuous, interconnected pore space of a rock controls the flow of electrical current through the rock. In… Read more →

A porosity unit, abbreviated p.u., is the standard measure of pore space used in petrophysics and well logging, defined as one percent of the bulk volume of a rock that is occupied by pores rather than solid mineral… Read more →

A rock or soil with interconnected pores that permit flow of fluids through the medium. Read more →

The porous plate technique (also called the porous plate capillary pressure method or porous plate drainage/imbibition apparatus) is a laboratory core analysis method for measuring capillary pressure as a function of… Read more →

Portland cement is the hydraulic binder produced by pulverizing clinker that consists essentially of hydraulic calcium silicates, and it is by a wide margin the most common type of cement used for oil- and gas-well… Read more →

Portland cement clinker is the nodular, sintered intermediate product formed by heating a precisely proportioned mixture of calcium carbonate (limestone), silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide, and iron oxide in a rotary kiln… Read more →

What Is a Positive Displacement Pump? Positive displacement pump (also called a PD pump or positive-displacement fluid pump) is a pump that moves fluid by trapping a fixed volume within a mechanical chamber and then… Read more →

In oil and gas operations, "post" appears across multiple technical contexts: as a structural element (the vertical steel members of a rig substructure, derrick, or mast that support the working loads of the drill… Read more →

Post-mature, also written postmature and used interchangeably with overmature, describes a hydrocarbon source rock that has been heated so intensely, and for so long, that its kerogen has already generated nearly all… Read more →

The potassium ion (K+) functions as a shale inhibitor in water-based drilling fluids by exploiting the near-perfect match between its ionic radius (1.33 angstroms) and the interlayer spacing of smectite clay minerals,… Read more →

The ion of potassium, K+. There are tests used to monitor high (>5000 mg/L) or low ( Read more →

Potassium mud is a water-based drilling fluid that contains potassium chloride (KCl) dissolved in the water phase to inhibit the swelling and dispersion of reactive clay minerals in the formation being drilled. The… Read more →

Potential field methods in geophysics encompass the measurement and interpretation of the Earth's gravitational and magnetic fields to map subsurface density contrasts (gravity method) and magnetic susceptibility… Read more →