elephant n.— «It is sitting on what looks like the biggest new oilfield since the North Sea and Mexico offshore: a giant, by oil industry standards, if not yet exactly an elephant—Cano Limon, in Oxy’s 2.7 million-acre contract in Colombia...
elephant n.— «Though more than a thousand discoveries are made in the U.S. yearly, “elephant fields”—those containing proven recoverable reserves of 100 million barrels of oil, one trillion cubic feet of gas, or the equivalant in mixed reserves—are...
shut in
n.— «No. 16 flowed 10,000 barrels, which went to waste, before it could be “shut in.”» —“In The Oil Fields” Los Angeles Times July 24, 1899. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
shut in n.— «The most important deal ever consummated in the history of the oil business was brought to a head at a late hour last night.…The great shut-down movement was completed in every detail, and the shut-down or shut-in will go into effect...
shut in n. in the petroleum industry, a production cap set lower than the available output (of an oil producing site). Also attrib., v. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
shut in n.— «About 300,000 barrels a day of wellhead capacity, representing about 70 per cent of Western Canada’s potential production, is shut in—a figure that is bound to increase later this year with the commissioning of the Fort McMurray...