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Oil, Gas & Mining vocabulary · Production & Offshore

Wellhead

Meaning in oil, gas & mining, with examples

/ˈwelhed/nounCore term

In oil, gas & mining, wellhead means: The steel equipment at the top of a well, at the surface or on the seabed, that holds the casing and tubing and connects the well to valves and flowlines.

In Turkish: kuyu başı, kuyu başı ekipmanı

How it is used

On a producing well, a set of valves called the Christmas tree sits on the wellhead. Operators read wellhead pressure and temperature. The word also appears in pricing: the wellhead price is the value of oil or gas before transport.

Example sentences

  1. Wellhead pressure dropped to 850 psi overnight.

  2. The subsea wellhead sits on the seabed at a water depth of 1,200 metres.

Common collocations

  • wellhead pressure
  • subsea wellhead
  • wellhead platform
  • wellhead price
  • wellA deep, narrow hole drilled into the ground to find or produce oil, gas or water, or to inject fluids back into a reservoir.
  • casingLarge steel pipe lowered into a newly drilled section of a well and cemented in place to stop the hole collapsing and to keep rock layers and fluids apart.
  • shut inTo close the valves on a well so that it stops flowing, for safety, repairs or a test, or because the production is not needed.
  • flow rateThe amount of oil, gas or water that flows from a well or through a pipe in a given time, such as barrels per day or cubic metres per hour.
  • blowout preventer (BOP)A large stack of heavy valves fitted on top of a well that can be closed quickly to seal the well and stop oil or gas escaping during drilling.

More terms: Production & Offshore

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