This is another in the technical series in which I talk about the different aspects of getting fossil fuels out of the ground. Others can found at this link: tech talk. This link is also available on the header of The Oil Drum home page.

It would be nice, once the drill hits the oil-bearing rock, to say that you were done. That having connected the feed line from the well through a choke valve (that controls the outflow from the well), we could proceed to tie the outflow into some kind of collection network, and then we could sit back and count the money as it flowed by.

Well not quite. There are a number of different steps that we have yet to go through before we can finish what is commonly called, the completion, of the well.