Blowout Preventer (BOP) Cut Away

A blowout preventer is a large, specialized valve used to seal, control and monitor oil and gas wells. Blowout preventers were developed to cope with extreme erratic pressures and uncontrolled flow (formation kick) emanating from a well reservoir during drilling. Kicks can lead to a potentially catastrophic event known as a blowout. In addition to controlling the downhole (occurring in the drilled hole) pressure and the flow of oil and gas, blowout preventers are intended to prevent tubing (e.g. drill pipe and well casing), tools and drilling fluid from being blown out of the wellbore (also known as bore hole, the hole leading to the reservoir) when a blowout threatens. Blowout preventers are critical to the safety of crew, rig (the equipment system used to drill a wellbore) and environment, and to the monitoring and maintenance of well integrity; thus blowout preventers are intended to be fail-safe devices.

The term BOP (an initialism rather than a spoken acronym, i.e., pronounced B-O-P, not "bop") is used in oilfield vernacular to refer to blowout preventers.

The abbreviated term preventer, usually prefaced by a type (e.g. ram preventer), is used to refer to a single blowout preventer unit. A blowout preventer may also simply be referred to by its type (e.g. ram).