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Oil, Gas & Mining vocabulary · Exploration & Geology

Strike oil

Meaning in oil, gas & mining, with examples

idiomCommon term

In oil, gas & mining, strike oil means: To find oil by drilling. In everyday English it also means to suddenly find something that brings great success or a lot of money.

In Turkish: petrol bulmak, petrole rastlamak

How it is used

More common in news, history and storytelling than in technical reports, which prefer 'make a discovery' or 'encounter hydrocarbons'. The past forms are 'struck oil' and 'have struck oil'. The same idea appears in 'strike gold' and 'a lucky strike'.

Example sentences

  1. The company hopes to strike oil before its licence expires.

  2. Edwin Drake's success in striking oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 is seen as the start of the modern US oil industry.

Common collocations

  • strike oil
  • strike gas
  • strike it rich
  • strike gold
  • explorationThe work of searching for new oil, gas or mineral deposits, using geological mapping, geophysical surveys, sampling and test drilling.
  • dry holeA well that does not find oil or gas in amounts worth producing. It is usually plugged and abandoned.
  • hydrocarbonA chemical compound made only of hydrogen and carbon. Crude oil and natural gas are mixtures of hydrocarbons, so the word often means oil and gas in general.
  • wellA deep, narrow hole drilled into the ground to find or produce oil, gas or water, or to inject fluids back into a reservoir.

More terms: Exploration & Geology

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