What Kind is Your Oil Well, Dummy?

Well symbols used in the oil industry

In the golden era of internet freelancing, i.e., before Google smashed most of the content farms flat with its Panda update, self-appointed "freelancers" could publish darned near anything, no matter how ridiculous. In order to protect the guilty, however, many of them adopted a nom de plume. Some were derivative of their real names, e.g., someone named Jane Charles pretending her name's "Jane Cee"; others were more obvious fakes; even creatively so. Today's DotD is the second kind and, given the quality of his output, probably for good reason: eHow's Angus Koolbreeze certainly showed his mettle in "Oil Well Types"¹ at BizFluent.com.

From the very first sentence, it's clear Koolbreeze (probably not his name; it's more likely the brand of his fan...) has no idea what he's talking about:

"An oil well is an instrument which, when a driller taps it, brings oil from the ground to the Earth's surface."

A "driller taps it"? Is this moron kidding?

Moving on... We asked our staff petroleum geologist about this, and he wasn't certain what the question meant. He figured that, most likely, the OQ wanted to know how to interpret the different well symbols on a production map. Depending on the source, you can come up with dozens of different well classifications depending on the fluid produced and the status of the well, as well as the original purpose of the well. Besides being a complete moron about the process of petroleum exploration, however, Angus can only come up with five, which says are

"An injection well is one in which a worker might inject water or gas into the well to stimulate oil production." "...oil rig workers use [an appraisal] well to run buildup tests, to test the stems of drills, and to gather fluid and core samples, among other evaluative functions." A satellite well "is one that an offshore drilling unit digs to produce hydrocarbons that well diggers cannot otherwise produce from development wells from a platform rig, or other permanent drilling source." "...an offset well is a well that a driller may place next to another one." Flowing well "...refers to a well that produces oil naturally... Hydrocarbons naturally flow through this structure between the formation of the well to the wellhead."

By this point, our geo-guy was over in the corner moaning and writhing in cognitive pain. We really have to stop torturing the poor guy with this kind of bullshit! But once he'd calmed down, he pointed out that

"Workers" don't inject water or gas into an injection well, it's an industrial scale pumping system, moron! Coffee came out his nose when he read that bull about "test the stems of drills," a completely FUBARed rewording of "drillstem test" – which, FWIW, does not test a drill.  He supposes you could call that a "satellite well," though most of the time it's a production well or a sidetrack... Yeah, sure, that's what an offset is – a well drilled off to the side, though someone who knows jack about exploration might want to explain just how and why you offset a well... Well, yes, that's a "flowing well." What's important is that most wells aren't allowed to flow naturally and, even if they did, they'd have to be put on pumps eventually.

Mr. Koolbreeze, despite his MA in English, neglected to mention some pretty important types of oil wells – terms like wildcat, stepout, production, sidetrack, infill, directionally-drilled (slant hole), horizontal, shut-in, suspended, abandoned, temporarily abandoned, junked and abandoned, and drilling all come to mind. And then there are the dozens of types depending on the type of fluid produced or injected (oil, water, gas, condensate, etc.)

In other words, asking  Koolbreeze (or whatever his name really is²) to list (and explain) the types of oil wells turned out to be an exercise in dumbassery. We're more than happy to present to Angus the Dumbass of the Day award, scientific illiteracy division.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/list_7627468_oil-well-types.html
² Probably Debra Turner

copyright © 2016-2022 scmrak

SE - OIL