Oil and Gas Terms Beginning with “S” — Page 4

A screenout (also written as screen-out) in hydraulic fracturing is a sudden, unplanned termination of a frac job caused by proppant bridging across the fracture aperture at or near the perforations, in the… Read more →

Scrubbing is the process of removing impurities, liquid hydrocarbons, water, or trace contaminants from a gas stream by passing the gas through a scrubber, which is a vessel designed to bring the gas into close contact… Read more →

A scrubber in oil and gas production and processing is a pressure vessel or inline separator designed to remove liquid droplets, solid particles, and other contaminants from a gas stream before the gas enters downstream… Read more →

Oil recovered from a knockout or scrubber device. Read more →

A type of receiver that can be positioned on the seafloor to acquire seismic data. Read more →

What Is a Seal in Oil and Gas? A seal is a relatively impermeable rock unit — most commonly shale, anhydrite, or salt — that forms a barrier above and around a reservoir to prevent migrating hydrocarbons from escaping… Read more →

A seal assembly in downhole completion engineering is a system of seals arranged on a component (typically the bottom of the tubing string, a packer stinger, or a completion accessory) that engages within a polished… Read more →

A seal receptacle (also called a polished bore receptacle or PBR) is a profiled downhole completion component machined to a precisely controlled internal diameter and surface finish (typically 16 to 32 microinch Ra)… Read more →

A polished bore designed to accept a seal assembly, such as may be used in a permanent production packer. Read more →

A sealbore packer (also called a polished bore receptacle packer or PBR packer in some regional usage) is a completion packer equipped with a precisely machined, highly polished internal bore into which a seal assembly… Read more →

Seals in petroleum geology and reservoir engineering are geological barriers that prevent the migration of hydrocarbons out of a trap, separating fluid compartments within reservoirs or hydraulically isolating reservoir… Read more →

(noun) A short, internally profiled section of tubing installed in a completion string that provides a machined bore for setting and sealing flow-control devices such as plugs, blanking tools, and check valves. Unlike a… Read more →

Seawater mud is a water-based drilling fluid in which seawater rather than fresh water is the continuous aqueous phase, used primarily in offshore drilling operations where seawater is abundant and locally available,… Read more →

The movement of generated hydrocarbons into a reservoir after their expulsion, or primary migration, from a source rock. Read more →

The porosity created through alteration of rock, commonly by processes such as dolomitization, dissolution and fracturing. Read more →

Secondary production (also called secondary recovery) is the phase of oil and gas field development that follows primary production (the initial exploitation of reservoir energy by natural drive mechanisms) and employs… Read more →

What Is Secondary Recovery? Secondary recovery is the second stage of oil production in which external energy — injected water or gas — is introduced into a reservoir to maintain pressure and displace oil that primary… Read more →

The secondary term of an oil and gas lease is the period of the lease that extends beyond the initial fixed duration (the primary term) during which the lessee (the oil company or operator holding the lease) retains the… Read more →

The secondary porosity index (SPI) is a log-derived petrophysical parameter calculated as the difference between total porosity measured by the density-neutron combination (total porosity, reflecting all pore types… Read more →

Sediment in the petroleum industry refers to solid particles suspended in or deposited from crude oil, produced water, or refined products — including inorganic material (sand grains, silt, clay particles, formation… Read more →

What Is Sedimentary Rock? Sedimentary rock forms at or near the Earth's surface when particles eroded from pre-existing rocks, materials produced by biological organisms, or minerals precipitated from solution… Read more →

A sedimentary basin is a large-scale topographic and structural depression in the Earth's crust where sediments have accumulated over millions to hundreds of millions of years to form thick sequences of sedimentary rock… Read more →

The process of separation of the components of a cementslurry during which the solids settle. Sedimentation is one of the characterizations used to define slurry stability. Read more →

Seismic, in the petroleum exploration and production context, refers collectively to the family of geophysical methods that use elastic wave propagation (acoustic or sound waves) through the Earth to image and… Read more →

(noun) The process of analysing seismic data to extract geological information about subsurface structures, stratigraphy, and rock properties. Seismic interpretation involves identifying and mapping reflectors, faults,… Read more →

Seismic modeling is the computational process of generating synthetic seismic data from an assumed or known subsurface earth model, used to predict what recorded seismic data should look like in order to calibrate… Read more →

Traces recorded from a single shotpoint. Numerous seismic records are displayed together in a single seismic section. Read more →

A seismic section is a two-dimensional cross-sectional display of seismic reflection data showing seismic amplitude (or, after processing, attributes such as impedance, instantaneous phase, or envelope) plotted as a… Read more →

A seismic trace is the fundamental unit of seismic data recording, consisting of a time-series of amplitude values that represents the Earth's acoustic response at a specific receiver location (geophone on land,… Read more →

A seismic-while-drilling vertical seismic profile (SWD-VSP) is a borehole seismic measurement technique in which seismic receivers mounted on the drill string or bottom hole assembly record seismic energy generated by… Read more →