Wiktionary
alt. An area under which are reserves of petroleum, especially one with productive oil wells. n. An area under which are reserves of petroleum, especially one with productive oil wells.
Wikipedia
An "oil field" or "oilfield" is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum (crude oil) from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area. In addition, there may be exploratory wells probing the edges, pipelines to transport the oil elsewhere, and support facilities.
Because an oil field may be remote from civilization, establishing a field is often an extremely complicated exercise in logistics. This goes beyond requirements for drilling, to include associated infrastructure. For instance, workers require housing to allow them to work onsite for months or years. In turn, housing and equipment require electricity and water. In cold regions, pipelines may need to be heated. Also, excess natural gas may be burned off if there is no way to make use of it—which requires a furnace, chimney and pipes to carry it from the well to the furnace.
Thus, the typical oil field resembles a small, self-contained town in the midst of a landscape dotted with drilling rigs and/or the pump jacks, which are known as " nodding donkeys" because of their bobbing arm. Several companies, such as Hill International, Bechtel, Esso, Weatherford International, Schlumberger Limited, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, have organizations that specialize in the large-scale construction of the infrastructure and providing specialized services required to operate a field profitably.
More than 40,000 oil fields are scattered around the globe, on land and offshore. The largest are the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia and the Burgan Field in Kuwait, with more than 60 billion barrels estimated in each. Most oil fields are much smaller. According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), as of 2003 the US alone had over 30,000 oil fields.
In the modern age, the location of oil fields with proven oil reserves is a key underlying factor in many geopolitical conflicts.
The term "oilfield" is also used as a shorthand to refer to the entire petroleum industry. However, it is more accurate to divide the oil industry into three sectors: upstream (crude production from wells and separation of water from oil), midstream (pipeline and tanker transport of crude) and downstream (refining and marketing of refined products).
Usage examples of "oil field".
When he had looked at the order of the State Science Institute on his desk, it had seemed to him that the glow moving over the paper did not come from the furnaces outside, but from the flames of a burning oil field.
The place of dead animals was an oil field, Remo dropped the note and ran downstairs.
It won't be like the one they're building to the oil field, though.
It's many kilometers from our border to their new oil field on the Arctic Ocean—.
Incidentally, the Arab boy's old man, a prince of the blood royal, owned the oil field in question.
And every oil field has its tales of savagery and its black ghosts—.
The Rumeila South oil field alone could be producing half a million barrels of oil a day within a month or two, and production in the northern oil-rich cities like Mosul and Kirkuk could be even higher.
If his calculations were even close to being correct, this find had every chance of being a major oil field, perhaps rivaling the Baku oil field in the Crimea.
We met at the conference when you gave a report on your discovery of the oil field near Baffin Island.
After that, he mined manganese off Vancouver Island and brought in an oil field in Peru.