The world's deepest well reaches. Ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula: history and secrets
"Dr. Huberman, what the hell did you dig up down there?" - a remark from the audience interrupted the report of a Russian scientist at a UNESCO meeting in Australia. A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, a wave of reports about a mysterious accident at the Kola superdeep well swept across the world.
Allegedly, on approaching the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like that. A few seconds after the terrible sound appeared, an explosion occurred...
Space under your feet
In the late 70s - early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep Well, as residents of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk Region affectionately call the well, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Out of hundreds of applicants, one or two were chosen. Along with the employment order, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of Moscow professors. There were 16 research laboratories operating at the well simultaneously, each the size of an average factory. Only the Germans dug the earth with such tenacity, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.
Distant galaxies have been studied by humanity much better than what is located under the earth’s crust a few kilometers away from us. The Kola Superdeep is a kind of telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that the Earth consists of a crust, mantle and core. At the same time, no one could really say where one layer ends and the next begins. Scientists did not even know what these layers actually consist of. Some 40 years ago they were sure that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then there are basalts. The mantle was expected to be encountered at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep Site have proven that this is not so.
Baltic shield
Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks emerge under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of approximately 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer layer of water. Alas, not a single ocean drilling site has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers. In general, almost all projects of ultra-deep wells mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the drills: either they found themselves in unexpected super-hot areas, or as if they were being bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Only 5 wells broke through deeper than 3 kilometers, 4 of which were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the 7-kilometer mark.
Initial domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology that it was necessary to create a well on the continent. Although it would take much longer to drill, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates that the most significant movements of earth rocks took place in prehistoric times. The drilling point was not chosen on the Kola Peninsula by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind.
A multi-kilometer section of the layers of the Baltic Shield is a visual history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.
Conqueror of the Depths
The appearance of the Kola drilling rig can disappoint the average person. The well is not like the mine that our imagination pictures. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. The imaginary section of the Kola superdeep well looks like a tiny needle piercing the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of a needle, is raised and lowered over several days. You can’t go faster: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.
What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the underground can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below really look like screams and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that plagued the Kola Superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers. Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures at which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. One day, it was as if the cable had been pulled from below and was torn off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remains of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents still remains a mystery. However, they were not the reason for stopping drilling in the Baltic Shield.
12,000 meters of discoveries and a little devilry
“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” - David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,262 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.
Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Huberman. Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at 5 kilometers the ambient temperature exceeded 700C, at seven - over 1200C, and at a depth of 12 it was hotter than 2200C - 1000C higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters. At school we were taught: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, mantle and core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next there should have been basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is a very important discovery, because all our ideas about the origin and distribution of minerals are connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth.
Another surprise: life on planet Earth turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sediments, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas
There were almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers at the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for where exactly.
The history of the Kola Superdeep is not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not, it was in 1995 that a powerful explosion of unknown origin was heard in the depths of the mine. Journalists from a Finnish newspaper broke through to the residents of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.
“When UNESCO began to ask me about this mysterious story, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened to us. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing like that was found at the same depth,” recalls academician David Guberman.
Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine belt, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.
The deepest wells in the world March 18th, 2015
The dream of penetrating into the depths of our planet, along with plans to send a person into space, seemed absolutely impossible for many centuries. In the 13th century, the Chinese were already digging wells up to 1,200 meters deep, and with the advent of drilling rigs in the 1930s, Europeans managed to penetrate to a depth of three kilometers, but these were only scratches on the body of the planet.
As a global project, the idea to drill into the upper shell of the Earth appeared in the 1960s. Hypotheses about the structure of the mantle were based on indirect data, such as seismic activity. And the only way to literally look into the bowels of the earth was to drill ultra-deep wells. Hundreds of wells on the surface and in the depths of the ocean have provided answers to some of the scientists' questions, but the days when they were used to test a variety of hypotheses are long gone.
Let's remember the list of the deepest wells on earth...
Siljan Ring (Sweden, 6800 m)
At the end of the 80s in Sweden, a well of the same name was drilled in the Siljan Ring crater. According to the scientists’ hypothesis, it was in that place that natural gas deposits of non-biological origin were expected to be found. The drilling result disappointed both investors and scientists. Hydrocarbons were not detected on an industrial scale.
Zistersdorf UT2A (Austria, 8553 m)
In 1977, the Zistersdorf UT1A well was drilled in the Vienna oil and gas basin, where several small oil fields were hidden. When unrecoverable gas reserves were discovered at a depth of 7,544 m, the first well suddenly collapsed, forcing OMV to drill a second. However, this time the miners did not find deep hydrocarbon resources.
Hauptbohrung (Germany, 9101 m)
The famous Kola well made an indelible impression on the European public. Many countries have begun to prepare their ultra-deep well projects, but the Hauptborung well, developed from 1990 to 1994 in Germany, is especially noteworthy. Reaching only 9 km, it has become one of the most famous ultra-deep wells thanks to the openness of drilling and scientific data.
Baden Unit (USA, 9159 m)
A well drilled by Lone Star near the city of Anadarko. Its development began in 1970 and lasted for 545 days. In total, this well required 1,700 tons of cement and 150 diamond bits. And its total cost cost the company $6 million.
Bertha Rogers (USA, 9583 m)
Another ultra-deep well created in the Anadarko oil and gas basin in Oklahoma in 1974. The entire drilling process took Lone Star workers 502 days. Work had to be stopped when miners stumbled upon a molten sulfur deposit at a depth of 9.5 kilometers.
Kola superdeep (USSR, 12,262 m)
Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the deepest human invasion of the earth's crust." When drilling began in May 1970 near the lake with the unpronounceable name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, it was assumed that the well would reach a depth of 15 kilometers. But due to high temperatures (up to 230°C), the work had to be curtailed. At the moment, the Kola well is mothballed.
I already told you about the history of this well -
BD-04A (Qatar, 12,289 m)
7 years ago, exploration well BD-04A was drilled in the Al-Shaheen oil field in Qatar. It is noteworthy that the Maersk drilling platform was able to reach 12 kilometers in a record 36 days!
OP-11 (Russia, 12,345 m)
January 2011 was marked by a message from Exxon Neftegas that drilling of the longest extended reach well was close to completion. OR-11, located at the Odoptu field, also set a record for the length of a horizontal wellbore - 11,475 meters. The miners were able to complete the work in just 60 days.
The total length of the OP-11 well at the Odoptu field was 12,345 meters (7.67 miles), thereby setting a new world record for drilling extended reach wells (ERR). OR-11 also ranked first in the world in terms of the horizontal distance between the bottom and the drilling point - 11,475 meters (7.13 miles). ENL completed the record-breaking well in just 60 days using ExxonMobil's high-speed drilling and integrated drilling quality control technologies, achieving the highest drilling performance in every foot of the OR-11 well.
“The Sakhalin-1 project continues to contribute to Russia's leadership in the global oil and gas industry,” said James Taylor, ENL President. — To date, 6 of the 10 longest EDS wells, including the OP-11 well, have been drilled as part of the Sakhalin-1 project using drilling technologies from ExxonMobil Corporation. The specially designed Yastreb drilling rig was used throughout the project, setting numerous industry records for hole length, drilling speed and directional drilling performance. We also set a new record while maintaining excellent safety, health and environmental performance.”
The Odoptu field, one of three fields of the Sakhalin-1 project, is located on the shelf, at a distance of 5-7 miles (8-11 km) from the north-eastern coast of Sakhalin Island. BOV technology makes it possible to successfully drill wells from the shore under the seabed to reach offshore oil and gas deposits, without violating the principles of safety and environmental protection, in one of the most difficult subarctic regions of the world to develop.
P.S. And here's what they write in the comments: tim_o_fay: let's separate the flies from the cutlets :) Long well ≠ deep. The same BD-04A, of its 12,289 m, has 10,902 m of horizontal trunk. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x150185 Accordingly, the vertical there is a kilometer or so in total. What does it mean? This means low (comparatively) pressure and temperature at the bottom, soft rocks (with a good penetration rate), etc. and so on. OP-11 from the same opera. I won’t say that drilling horizontals is easy (I’ve been doing this for eight years), but it’s still much easier than drilling super-deep ones. Bertha Rogers, SG-3 (Kola), Baden Unit and others with great true vertical depth (literal translation from English True Vertical Depth, TVD) - this is truly something transcendental. In 1985, former graduates from all over the Union came to the fiftieth anniversary of SOGRT with stories and gifts for the technical school museum. Then I was honored to touch a piece of granite gneiss from a depth of more than 11.5 km :)
At a depth of 410-660 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, there is an ocean of the Archean period. Such discoveries would not have been possible without the ultra-deep drilling methods developed and used in the Soviet Union. One of the artifacts of those times is the Kola superdeep well (SG-3), which, even 24 years after the cessation of drilling, remains the deepest in the world. Why it was drilled and what discoveries it helped make, says Lenta.ru.
The Americans were the pioneers of ultra-deep drilling. True, in the vastness of the ocean: in the pilot project they used the Glomar Challenger vessel, designed precisely for these purposes. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was actively developing an appropriate theoretical framework.
In May 1970, in the north of the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, drilling of the Kola superdeep well began. As expected, this was timed to coincide with the centenary of Lenin’s birth. Unlike other ultra-deep wells, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes and even organized a special geological exploration expedition.
The drilling location chosen was unique: it is on the Baltic Shield in the Kola Peninsula area that ancient rocks come to the surface. The age of many of them reaches three billion years (our planet itself is 4.5 billion years old). In addition, there is the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzuga rift trough - a cup-like structure pressed into ancient rocks, the origin of which is explained by a deep fault.
It took scientists four years to drill a well to a depth of 7263 meters. So far, nothing unusual has been done: the same installation was used as for oil and gas production. Then the well stood idle for a whole year: the installation was modified for turbine drilling. After the upgrade, it was possible to drill approximately 60 meters per month.
The depth of seven kilometers brought surprises: alternation of hard and not very dense rocks. Accidents became more frequent, and many cavities appeared in the wellbore. Drilling continued until 1983, when the depth of SG-3 reached 12 kilometers. After this, the scientists gathered a large conference and talked about their successes.
However, due to careless handling of the drill, a five-kilometer-long section remained in the mine. They tried to get her for several months, but were unsuccessful. It was decided to start drilling again from a depth of seven kilometers. Due to the complexity of the operation, not only the main trunk was drilled, but also four additional ones. It took six years to restore the lost meters: in 1990, the well reached a depth of 12,262 meters, becoming the deepest in the world.
Two years later, drilling was stopped, the well was subsequently mothballed, and in fact abandoned.
Nevertheless, many discoveries were made at the Kola superdeep well. Engineers have created an entire system of ultra-deep drilling. The difficulty lay not only in the depth, but also in the high temperatures (up to 200 degrees Celsius) due to the intensity of the drills.
Scientists not only moved deeper into the Earth, but also lifted rock samples and cores for analysis. By the way, it was they who studied the lunar soil and found that its composition almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about three kilometers.
At a depth of over nine kilometers they came across deposits of minerals, including gold: in the olivine layer there is as much as 78 grams per ton. And this is not so little - gold mining is considered possible at 34 grams per ton. A pleasant surprise for scientists, as well as for the nearby plant, was the discovery of a new ore horizon of copper-nickel ores.
Among other things, the researchers learned that granites do not transform into a super-strong basalt layer: in fact, behind it were Archean gneisses, which are traditionally classified as fractured rocks. This produced a kind of revolution in geological and geophysical science and completely changed traditional ideas about the interior of the Earth.
Another pleasant surprise is the discovery at a depth of 9-12 kilometers of highly porous fractured rocks, saturated with highly mineralized waters. According to scientists, they are responsible for the formation of ores, but previously it was believed that this occurs only at much shallower depths.
Among other things, it turned out that the temperature of the subsoil was slightly higher than expected: at a depth of six kilometers, a temperature gradient of 20 degrees Celsius per kilometer was obtained instead of the 16 expected. The radiogenic origin of the heat flow was established, which also did not agree with previous hypotheses.
In deep layers more than 2.8 billion years old, scientists have found 14 species of fossilized microorganisms. This made it possible to shift the time of the emergence of life on the planet one and a half billion years ago. The researchers also found that at depths there are no sedimentary rocks and there is methane, forever burying the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons.
Kola
The Kola superdeep well is the deepest on earth. It is located in the Murmansk region, approximately 10 km from the city of Zapolyarny. Its depth is 12262 m. The most interesting thing is that, unlike most other wells, which were created only for mining, Kola was originally created to study the lithosphere (the solid shell of the planet).
The Kola Superdeep Pipeline was founded on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin in 1970. The researchers were interested in studying volcanic rocks that are rarely drilled for mining. It was assumed that at a depth of about 4-5 km the granite layer would be replaced by basalt. Drilling itself began in May. It is worth noting that there were no particular problems during the work. However, after a depth of seven thousand meters, the drill head entered strong layered rocks, while passing through which the wellbore began to crumble. Therefore, the drill string often became jammed with rock, as a result of which the head simply broke off during lifting. And since the lost part of the column was cemented, drilling continued with a large deviation from the specified target. Similar accidents occurred quite often. Note that in the best years, more than 15 research laboratories worked at the well.
In 1983, the depth of the object was 12,066 meters. At this point, it was decided to suspend work in order to prepare for the International Geological Congress, which a year later was held in Moscow. In 1984, drilling continued. And then a new accident occurred - the drill string broke. It was decided to drill a new branch from a depth of seven thousand meters. By 1990, the depth of the branch was 12,262 m, and when the column broke for the umpteenth time, all work was curtailed.
Currently, the facility is considered abandoned, the well itself has been mothballed and is beginning to collapse, all equipment has been dismantled, and the building has turned into ruins. To restore everything around, you will need about 100 million rubles. Whether this will ever happen, no one knows.
As for the research, scientists believed that at a certain depth they would find a clearly defined boundary between granites and basalts, but only granites were found throughout the entire depth. There was also a problem with the core (rock sample extracted from a well) - when lifted, the samples crumbled due to active gas release, since they could not withstand the instantaneous change in pressure. However, in some cases, scientists were able to remove a solid piece of core, but only if it was very slowly raised to the surface.
If we talk about the results of the activity in general, they were quite unexpected for scientists, since they did not provide a clear understanding of the nature of the earth’s mantle. In addition, researchers subsequently stated that the place to start work was not the most successful - those rocks that were located at a depth of about 2000 m could be found on the surface of the earth near Kola. The temperature at a 5-kilometer depth was 70 °C, at 7 - 120 °C, and at 12 - 220 °C.
There are many rumors about Kola related to the other world. For example, the well is often called the “road to hell” - according to legend, at a depth of 12 km, scientists’ equipment recorded screams and moans emanating from the bowels of the Earth. Of course, these are all stupid conjectures, if only because the sound itself is not recorded, but a seismic receiver is used.
By the way, at the moment the Kola is sealed and has been in this state for almost 20 years. At the same time, there is a small probability that the well will someday be unsealed and work on it will continue. In this case, people will be able to obtain new information about what the depths of our planet hide. True, a fantastic amount of funds must be allocated to continue the work.
Maersk Oil BD-04A
UPDATE! Since this article was written a long time ago, a lot has changed over the years. So, at the moment, the Kola is not at all the deepest well on earth. Moreover, she is not even among the top three!
In third place is the Maersk Oil BD-04A oil well, whose depth reaches 12,290 meters. It is located in the Al Shaheen oil basin in Qatar.
The Maersk company itself (Denmark) is better known for the transport business. In particular, with its container transportation. Its history dates back to the beginning of the 20th century.
Odoptu-sea
The silver award goes to the Odoptu-sea oil well, drilled at an acute angle to the surface of the earth, whose depth is 12,345 meters.
Sakhalin-1 is an oil and gas project that was decided to be implemented on the island of Sakhalin, more precisely, on its northeastern shelf. One of its branches is the creation of the Odoptu-sea well. The development of oil (more than 2 billion barrels) and natural gas (485 billion cubic meters) is envisaged.
30% of the project belongs to ExxonMobil, the same amount belongs to SODECO, and the remaining 40% is equally divided between ONGC and Rosneft. As of now, this is one of the largest Russian projects, which has received truly huge investments from abroad.
It is noteworthy that the leader today is the Z-42 well, created as part of the Sakhalin-1 project, which is written about a few lines above. The depth of Z-42 reaches 12,700 meters. The most interesting thing is that the construction of the well took only 73 days, which by world standards is simply an excellent result.
Back in 1990, in the southern part of Germany, a group of scientists decided to look into the depths of our planet at the junction of two tectonic plates that collided more than 300 million years ago, when the continent was formed. The final goal of the scientists was to drill one of the deepest wells in the world, up to 10 km.
Initially, it was assumed that the well would become a kind of “telescope”, which would make it possible to learn more about the depths of our planet and try to learn about the Earth’s core. The drilling process took place as part of the Continental Deep Drilling program and lasted until October 1994, when the program had to be curtailed due to financial problems.
The well was named Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik, abbreviated KTB, and by the time the program was closed it had been drilled to more than 9 km, which did not add enthusiasm to the scientists. The drilling process itself was not easy. For 4 years, scientists, engineers and workers had to face a whole bunch of difficult situations and quite complex tasks. For example, the drill had to pass through rocks heated to a temperature of about 300 degrees Celsius, but even under such conditions, the drillers still managed to cool the hole with liquid hydrogen.
However, despite the fact that the program was curtailed, scientific experiments did not stop and were carried out until the end of 1995, and it is worth noting that they were not carried out in vain. During this time, it was possible to discover new, rather unexpected facts about the structure of our planet, new temperature distribution maps were compiled and data on the distribution of seismic pressure were obtained, which made it possible to create models of the layered structure of the upper part of the Earth's surface.
However, scientists saved the most interesting for last. Dutch scientist Lott Given, who, together with acoustic engineers and scientists from the Geophysical Research Center (Germany), did what many had dreamed of - almost in the literal sense of the word, he “heard the heartbeat” of the Earth. To do this, he and his team needed to carry out acoustic measurements, with which the research team recreated the sounds that we could hear at a depth of 9 kilometers. However, now you can hear these sounds too.
Despite the fact that KTB is currently considered the deepest well in the world, there are several similar wells, which, however, have already been sealed. And among them, a well stands out, which during its existence has managed to acquire legends; this is the Kola superdeep well-well, better known as the “Road to Hell”. Unlike other competitors of KTB, the Kola well reached 12.2 km in depth and was considered the deepest well in the world.
Its drilling began in 1970 in the Murmansk region (Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation), 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. During drilling, the well experienced several accidents, as a result of which workers had to concrete the well and start drilling from a much shallower depth and at a different angle. It is interesting that it is with a series of accidents and failures that haunt the group that the reason for the emergence of the legend that the well was drilled all the way to the real Hell is associated.
As the text of the legend says, after passing the 12 km mark, scientists were able to hear the sounds of screams using microphones. However, they decided to continue drilling and while passing the next mark (14 km), they suddenly came across voids. After the scientists lowered the microphones, they heard the screams and moans of men and women. And after some time, an accident occurred, after which it was decided to stop drilling work
And, despite the fact that the accident really happened, scientists did not hear any screams of people, and all the talk about demons was nothing more than fiction, said David Mironovich Guberman, one of the authors of the project, under whose leadership the well was drilled.
After another accident in 1990, upon reaching a depth of 12,262 meters, drilling was completed, and in 2008, the project was abandoned and the equipment was dismantled. Two years later, in 2010, the well was mothballed.
Let us note that projects such as drilling wells such as the KTV and Kola wells are currently the only way and opportunity for geologists to study the interior of the planet.