oilpatch

Noun

1. A patch or puddle of oil.
   • Near-synonyms: oil spot, oil slick
   • This minority establishes itself at the most vulnerable zone of the national territory, and then slowly spreads like an oilpatch, propagating itself in concentric ripples through the peasant masses, to the smaller...

   Synonyms: oil spot oil slick

2. An oil and gas producing region; (metonymic) the oil and gas industry.
   • Like many men of that era and region, he wandered into the oilpatch and worked as a roustabout for a while.
   • "Texas Oil Patch Songs": [...] Willet [...] sings a dozen of his own songs having to do with oil workers [...] - 1959 November 16, The Billboard, page 50:
   • Fracturing the formation in the lingo of the oil patch is to perform a frac job. - 2005, Martin S. Raymond, William L. Leffler, Oil & Gas Production in Nontechnical Language: