When all the controls described above fail, a blowout occurs. Blowouts are dangerous since they can eject the drill string out of the well, and the force of the escaping fluid can be strong enough to damage the drilling rig. Blowouts often ignite due to the presence of an ignition source, from sparks from rocks being ejected along with flammable fluids, or simply from heat generated by friction. (Rarely...

Siting. One of the first things to decide is where to place the well. Assuming that an aquifer has been found at depth, the important considerations include maximizing distances to potential contaminants, access for machinery and potential future uses of the property. Septic systems, waste disposal lines, animal feedlots and buried fuel tanks all have the potential to degrade groundwater quality....

The top portion of a well is commonly called the wellhead. The appearance of the wellhead varies depending on its purpose, when and how it was constructed, and what materials were available when it was built. A hand-dug well may look like the nursery rhyme well in Jack and Jill—a deep hole surrounded by a stone wall. Most wells however, appear as a pipe, usually 5 to 25 centimeters (2 to 10 inches)...

Well drilling is the process of drilling a hole in the ground for the extraction of a natural resource such as ground water, natural gas, or petroleum. Drilling for the exploration of the nature of the material underground (for instance in search of metallic ore) is best described as borehole drilling, or ‘drilling’. The earliest wells were water wells, shallow pits dug by hand in regions...