stripper well
- noun
- /ˈstrɪpər wɛl/
- Specialized
- Many old oil fields are now filled with stripper wells that produce very little oil each day.
Examples
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Higher prices have also restarted the low-producing stripper wells in places such as Texas and Oklahoma.
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I would like to know the answer to that as well, as I understand the vast majority of US production is from very small stripper wells.
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I think most countries have missed the boat on the stripper well fat tail.
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That being said, there is no such thing as a deepwater offshore stripper well.
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Personally, I think that no one is optimistic about the long-term viability of the American oil industry, other than those stripper wells.
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Is there any information yet on the number of closed-down older wells, or the number reduced to 'stripper' wells at 10 or so barrels per day?
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A giant, fumbling government-owned oil company like PEMEX could never maintain stripper wells.
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The "stripper wells, classed as <15bpd, together account for 310,000 wells (85% of all the wells) and 19% of all US production.
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I read somewhere that someone had made an extensive analysis (may have been Bernstein) of Bakken wells and concluded (IIRC) that the number was six (6). What was meant by that is that it took six years from when a Bakken well started to flow until it became a stripper well (that is, a flow of 10-15 bbls/d).
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During the meeting, the engineer explained the challenges of maintaining stripper wells in the area.
Synonyms
A deep hole in the ground that brings up oil
An oil well that produces very little oil near the end of its life
A well that produces oil from the ground
How Productive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound relies on technical petroleum jargon: 'stripper' here is a specialized term for a very low-producing oil well, which is not the everyday meaning of 'stripper' or obviously derivable from 'strip' + '-er' plus 'well'. A B1 learner who knows 'stripper' only as a person who removes clothing or 'well' as a water/shaft would not predict the specific sense 'produces <10 barrels/day', so the expression is language- and domain-specific and therefore not transparently compositional.
Etymology
Stripper well may come from the idea of a stripper 'stripping' the last bits of oil from the ground, leaving only small amounts in the well. So the term means 'an oil well that produces only a very small amount of oil each day'.