Relief well

This article needs more links to other articles to help integrate it into the encyclopedia. Please help improve this article by adding links that are relevant to the context within the existing text. (April 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article appears to be a dictionary definition. Please rewrite it to present the subject from an encyclopedic point of view.

A relief well is a well drilled to intersect an oil or gas well that has experienced a blowout. Specialized liquid, such as heavy (dense) drilling mud followed by cement, can then be pumped down the relief well in order to stop the flow from the reservoir in the damaged well.

The first use of a relief well was in Texas in the mid-1930s when one was drilled to pump water into an oil well that had cratered and caught on fire.^[1]

• "How a relief well works | Gulf of Mexico response | BP". Retrieved 2010-05-16.
• "IEEE Spectrum: How to Drill A Relief Well". Retrieved 2010-08-05.

This article related to natural gas, petroleum or the petroleum industry is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e