Where is the deepest well in the world? Well in the Murmansk region. Ultra-deep wells located on the territory of the former USSR
In one of the scientific programs they gave a simple example that allows you to realize how huge our planet is. Imagine big balloon. This is the whole planet. And the thinnest walls are the zone where there is life. But people have actually mastered only one layer of atoms surrounding this wall.
But humanity is constantly striving to expand its knowledge about the planet and the processes occurring on it. We launch spaceships and satellites, we build submarines, but the hardest thing is to find out what is under our feet, inside the earth.
Wells bring relative understanding. With their help, you can find out the composition of rocks, study changes in physical conditions, and also conduct mineral exploration. And the most information, of course, will be brought by the most deep well in the world. The only question is where exactly it is. This is what we will try to figure out today.
OR-11
It is not surprising that the longest well was made quite recently, in 2011. New, more advanced technologies, durable and reliable materials, and accurate calculation methods made it possible to achieve this result.
Surely you will be pleased to know that it is located in Russia, and was drilled as part of the Sakhalin-1 project. All work required only 60 days, which far exceeds the results of previous surveys.
The total length of this record-breaking well is 12 kilometers 345 meters, which remains an unsurpassed record. Another achievement is the maximum length of the horizontal trunk, which is 11 kilometers 475 meters. So far no one has been able to surpass this result. But that's it for now.
BD-04A
This oil well in Qatar is famous for its record depth at that time. Its total length is 12 kilometers 289 meters, of which 10,902 meters is a horizontal trunk. By the way, it was built in 2008, and held the record for three whole years.
But this deep well is known not only for its impressive size, but also for a very sad fact. It was built next to an oil shelf for geological exploration, and in 2010 it suffered a serious accident.
This is what the well looks like now
Drilled during the USSR, the Kola superdeep well lost its title of leader in 2008. But still, it remains one of the most famous objects of this type and continues to hold third place.
Preparatory work for drilling began back in 1970. It was planned that this well would become the deepest on Earth, reaching 15 kilometers. True, such a result was never achieved. In 1992, work was suspended when the depth reached an impressive 12 kilometers 262 meters. Further research had to be stopped due to lack of funding and government support.
With its help, it was possible to obtain a lot of interesting scientific data and gain a deeper understanding of the structure earth's crust. This is not surprising, because the project was initially completely scientific, not related to geological exploration or the study of mineral deposits.
By the way, the popular legend about the “well to hell” is associated with the Kola superdeep well. They say that when they reached the 11-kilometer mark, scientists heard terrifying screams. And soon after that the drill broke. According to legend, this indicates the existence of hell underground, in which sinners are tormented. It was their screams that were heard by scientists.
True, the legend does not stand up to criticism. If only because no acoustic equipment could operate at pressure and temperature at these levels. But, on the other hand, it is quite interesting to speculate that the deepest borehole will be able to reach, if not hell, then some other legendary and mythical places.
For now, they just help scientists better understand how our planet lives. And although the journey to the center of the earth is still very far away, people are clearly striving for it.
Name Mohole compound. “Hole” means a well or simply a hole, and the first syllable “Mo” is taken from the surname of the outstanding Croatian geophysicist Andrej Mohorovicic. Thanks to him, the concept of Mohorovicic surface came into scientific use. This is the name of the mysterious underground region, presumably the lower boundary of the earth’s crust, on which there is an abrupt increase in the velocities of longitudinal seismic waves from 6.7-7.6 to 7.9-8.2 km/s and transverse ones from 3.6-4. 2 to 4.4-4.7 km/s. The density of the substance also increases abruptly, presumably from 2.9-3 to 3.1-3.5 t/m³. The goal of the Mohol project was precisely to reach this surface and for the first time get a visual, and not just a speculative, idea of it.
Drilling platform CUSS I, Project Mohole
It was believed that this would be easier to achieve by starting drilling on the ocean floor, where the crust was much thinner. A location was chosen near Guadalupe Island with an ocean depth of about 3.5 km. However, it was possible to drill only 5 test wells with a depth of up to 180 meters into the bottom. After this, the project, alas, had to be closed due to cost overruns.
In 1973-1974 The Bertha Rogers well was drilled in Oklahoma. Its purpose was more prosaic - oil production, but the project also had a research load. Bertha Rogers reached a depth of 9583 m and for the time being it remained the deepest well in the world.
Meanwhile, the USSR launched a project to create about 30 ultra-deep (more than 5 km) wells in various regions of the country. Mostly they were oil producers, but not all. In 1974, the deepest of them had a depth of 7263. This was the Kola superdeep well, which occupied a special place in the Soviet deep drilling program. It was not intended for oil production, but exclusively for scientific research.
The Kola superdeep mine was laid in 1970 in the northeastern part of the Baltic shield, in a place where the oldest igneous rocks come to the surface, little studied during mining, which is often carried out in sedimentary strata. In addition, the Mohorovicic border runs shallow here (relatively speaking, of course).
We aimed at 15 km. The tasks assigned to the project participants included confirming or disproving a number of theories in practice, identifying the features of ore formation processes, determining the nature of the boundaries separating layers in the continental crust, and collecting data on the material composition and physical state of rocks.
Drilling began on May 24. The diameter of the inlet hole was 92 cm. At first, work was carried out serial installation, which is usually used in oil and gas production. Then it was replaced by equipment specially developed by Uralmash from light but durable alloys. Otherwise, when rising from the depths, it would not have withstood its own weight.
The drill methodically pierced ancient granites, whose age exceeded 3 billion years. There was no shortage of surprises. The permanent director of the well, David Mironovich Guberman, said in an interview with Murmansky Vestnik in 2011:
We drilled and did not know what awaited us. At a depth of 1700 meters, deposits rich in nickel were found. Here are the job prospects for our plants! We dug further. And at three kilometers we reached the Moon! Pure Moon! - says David Mironovich and laughs: - We already had lunar soil then. We compared it with the one we lifted from three kilometers, in all respects physical and mechanical properties- one to one. My comrades and I joked then that the Moon had broken away from the Kola Peninsula! All that remains is to find the place where it came from...
Later, miracles began to occur, refuting many generally accepted theories. It was believed that at a depth of five kilometers granite would be replaced by basalts. At this depth, as at the Mohorovicic boundary, the instruments recorded a sharp increase in the speed of seismic waves. This phenomenon, known as the Conrad surface, was explained by the fact that here the upper granite layer of the earth's crust is replaced by a lower basalt layer. However, drilling did not confirm this. The 5 km mark was left behind, and the installation was still extracting granite cores (cylindrical rock columns intended for scientific analysis) to the surface. True, this granite was more and more unusual, compressed under high pressure, changing its physical and acoustic properties. But truly significant metamorphoses began only at the eighth kilometer, and not at all what geologists predicted. Now drilling went not through granites, but also not through basalts, but through gneisses - layered rock with a very low density for such a depth. The wellbore began to crumble, and then the drill string became jammed with rock, and the head broke off when trying to lift it. This did not discourage the researchers. The lost part of the drill string was cemented, and drilling continued with the deviation of the drilling tool.
publishing house "Nedra", 1984
Vladimir Basovich, deputy director for scientific work of the Kola superdeep well, recalls:
We had our own design bureau, we had our own programmers, we had our own workshop, we had our own forge, thermal incinerator, whatever you want. Today a need arose, an idea - tomorrow it turned into drawings. Two days later we made it ourselves. Four days later we launched it into unknown depths, into unprecedentedly critical operating conditions.
Photo: “Kola Superdeep” Ministry of Geology of the USSR,
publishing house "Nedra", 1984
The surprise from what he saw grew and grew. The rock turned out to be porous and fissured, and the voids were filled with water, which was not expected to be found in such quantities at such a depth. Along the way, we measured the temperature throughout the entire wellbore, natural radioactivity - gamma radiation, induced radioactivity after pulsed neutron irradiation, electrical and magnetic properties of rocks, the speed of propagation of elastic waves, and studied the composition of gases in the well fluid. There were surprises here too. The temperature rose much faster than predicted, and the radioactivity did not want to behave as expected.
On June 6, 1979, Soviet drillers broke Bertha Rogers' record and moved on. By 1984, the depth of the well exceeded 12 km. At the thirteenth kilometer, accidents began to follow one after another. After all, a damn dozen. At this stage, a funny urban legend arose, later replicated in all seriousness first by the Western and then by the post-Soviet press: Soviet drillers broke through the roof of hell, and recording equipment lowered into the well recorded the screams of sinners suffering there. Allegedly, this was the reason for stopping work and closing the well. But drilling had to be stopped for a completely materialistic reason: technical difficulties exceeded all conceivable limits. Lifting rocks and a drill head from such a depth is in itself incredibly difficult. Add to this high temperatures and pressure. And the inevitable differences in these indicators when rising to the surface. Actually, long before reaching the “devil’s dozen”, drilling turned into a desperately extreme activity. 50 km of pipes were used to drill the last 5 km of the well. Such was the degree of their wear.
In September 1984, the drill string broke off once again, and so unsuccessfully that the five kilometers of pipes that came off became stuck in the well, firmly blocking it. Drilling began almost anew from a depth of 7,000 m - and by 1990, a new branch reached a depth of 12,262 m, but then the column broke off again. This time, resumption of work was considered impossible. It’s a pity, but the Kola Superdeep has become a unique scientific and technical achievement, not only to surpass, but even to repeat, which no one has been able to replicate so far. But almost half a century has passed since the start! Today, there are a couple of oil production wells that are longer than the Kola, but they run at an angle to the surface and do not penetrate nearly as deeply into the bowels of the earth.
Drilling was completed, but this should not have meant completion scientific project. The unique twelve-kilometer core, divided into separate columns and numbered, was laid out in nine hundred boxes. They are stored in Yaroslavl. A thorough study of this invaluable material continues, and most likely will continue for a long time. The situation is worse with the well itself. Even during the work, it served as a deep observatory, where different levels instruments were installed that recorded the characteristics of the propagation of seismic waves and a bunch of other indicators. Moreover, all this was included in unified system deep observatories working in three dozen other ultra-deep wells located thousands of kilometers from each other. The information collected in this way made it possible to make significant progress in the difficult task of predicting earthquakes. The observatories also recorded features of the propagation of waves from underground nuclear explosions, over enormous distances and depths. Among other things, this made it possible to draw up deep maps of possible mineral deposits, which were then transferred to practicing geologists.
We got very interesting sections. From these sections we could seriously judge the structure of the earth's crust. Even up to one hundred and fifty kilometers. This opened up new opportunities for global exploration of the territory of the Soviet Union, - testifies the former Minister of Geology of the USSR Evgeny Kozlovsky.
The Kola Superdeep could still serve as a unique deep observatory. It could, but it doesn't work. They stopped funding it, closed it, and the ground complex with unique equipment was cut up for scrap metal. In an interview with Murmansky Vestnik, which turned out to be the last, David Mironovich Guberman said:
Eh, in order to maintain it and not destroy it, pennies were needed - three million, not dollars, our “wooden” rubles. They didn't give it, they saved it! And they got what they wanted... Everyone says that it’s expensive. Knowledge is expensive. Absolutely right. Why doesn’t anyone say how much ignorance costs?! Much more. Look what happened in Japan when accidents happened at nuclear power plants... I don’t understand! We didn't cost a penny! Drilling was cheap, all the equipment was domestic, not a single imported nail. No, they mothballed it, closed it, fired people! You see, it’s all nonsense that there is no money for science! Nonsense, we didn't ask for much. But what a return... And now you can install scientific equipment there, lower sensors to depth and take measurements. Invaluable information. According to the forecast of the same earthquakes...
Nowadays there is an ironic interpretation of the abbreviation RF - Resource Federation - circulating among the people. Those who repeat this bad joke seem to imagine that the resources of this very Federation are simply lying in an open field. Go out, pick it up with your bare hands and put it in containers. But all these notorious resources became available only thanks to the colossal work done by scientists and engineers. What power was poured into geological exploration, what intellect! And with what thoughtless extravagance it was then allowed to go down the drain! I really want to believe that the heirs have finally wised up and will not squander it; what is left is completely worthless. There is an opinion that the Kola superdeep can still be restored, at least as an institute for training specialists in offshore drilling. And maybe not only that. They say that the well bore is at least 8 km deep and is now quite “alive” and suitable for geophysical research. Restoring what was destroyed will, of course, not be cheap, but it is possible.
The 20th century was marked by the triumph of man in the air and the conquest of the deepest depressions of the World Ocean. Only the dream of penetrating the heart of our planet and cognizing the hitherto hidden life in its depths still remains unattainable. “Journey to the Center of the Earth” promises to be extremely difficult and exciting, fraught with a lot of surprises and incredible discoveries. The first steps on this path have already been taken - several dozen ultra-deep wells have been drilled around the world. The information obtained through ultra-deep drilling turned out to be so stunning that it shook the established ideas of geologists about the structure of our planet and provided rich materials for researchers in a variety of fields of knowledge.
Touch the robe
In the 13th century, hardworking Chinese dug wells 1,200 meters deep. Europeans broke the Chinese record in 1930, learning to pierce the earth's surface with the help of drilling 3 kilometers. In the late 1950s, the wells were extended to 7 kilometers. The era of ultra-deep drilling had begun.
Like most global projects, the idea to drill into the upper shell of the Earth arose in the 1960s of the 20th century, at the height of space flights and faith in the limitless possibilities of science and technology. The Americans planned to go through the entire earth's crust with a well and obtain samples of rocks of the upper mantle. Ideas about the mantle then (as, indeed, now) were based only on indirect data - the speed of propagation of seismic waves in the depths, the change in which was interpreted as the boundary of rock layers of different ages and composition. Scientists believed that the earth's crust was like a sandwich: young rocks on top, ancient rocks below. However, only ultra-deep drilling could provide an accurate picture of the structure and composition of the outer shell of the Earth and the upper mantle.
Project "Mohol"
In 1958, the Mohol ultra-deep drilling program appeared in the United States. This is one of the most daring and mysterious projects of post-war America. Like many other programs, Mohol was intended to overtake the USSR in scientific competition by setting a world record in ultra-deep drilling. The name of the project comes from the words “Mohorovicic” - the name of the Croatian scientist who identified the interface between the earth’s crust and the mantle - the Moho boundary, and “hole”, which means “well” in English. The creators of the program decided to drill in the ocean, where, according to geophysicists, the earth's crust is much thinner than on the continents. It was necessary to lower the pipes several kilometers into the water, cover 5 kilometers of the ocean floor and reach the upper mantle.
In April 1961, off the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean Sea, where the water column reaches 3.5 km, geologists drilled five wells, the deepest of which went 183 meters into the bottom. According to preliminary calculations, in this place under sedimentary rocks they expected to find upper layer the earth's crust is granite. But the core recovered from the sediments contained pure basalts - a kind of antipode of granites. The result of drilling discouraged and at the same time inspired scientists, they began to prepare a new phase of drilling. But when the cost of the project exceeded $100 million, the US Congress stopped funding. "Mohol" did not answer any of the questions posed, but it showed the main thing - ultra-deep drilling in the ocean is possible.
Funeral postponed
Ultra-deep drilling made it possible to look into the depths and understand how rocks behave at high pressures and temperatures. The idea that rocks become denser with depth and their porosity decreases turned out to be incorrect, as did the point of view about dry subsoil. This was first discovered when drilling the Kola superdeep; other wells in ancient crystalline strata confirmed the fact that at many kilometers deep, rocks are broken by cracks and penetrated by numerous pores, and aqueous solutions move freely under pressure of several hundred atmospheres. This discovery represents one of the most important achievements of ultra-deep drilling. It forced us to revisit the problem of disposing of radioactive waste, which was supposed to be placed in deep wells, which seemed completely safe. Considering the information about the state of the subsoil obtained during ultra-deep drilling, projects to create such burial grounds now look very risky.
In search of the cooled inferno
Since then, the world has become sick with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, they were preparing a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project). The Glomar Challenger, built specifically for this project, spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottoms, reaching a maximum depth of 760 m. By the mid-1980s, the results of offshore drilling confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was born again. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. Interest in the problem, awakened by the successes of the United States, resulted in the program “Study of the Earth's interior and ultra-deep drilling,” but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite its centuries-old history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new matter. After all, we were talking about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided more by political motives than by scientific ones. He did not want to fall behind the United States.
The newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology was headed by the famous oil worker, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolai Timofeev. He was tasked with justifying the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts made a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with the technology of tomorrow, the equipment that already exists is sufficient. the main problem- heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase by 1 degree every 33 meters. This means that at a depth of 10 km we should expect about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Drilling tools and instruments will not withstand such heat. It was necessary to look for a place where the depths are not so hot...
Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. A report prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth stated: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola Shield has cooled, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the subsoil of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, then the basalt layer begins. At that time, the idea of a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The drilling site was chosen at the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish it means “Under the Wolf Mountain,” although there are neither mountains nor wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.
Swedes' disappointment
In the late 1980s in Sweden, in search of natural gas of non-biological origin, a well was drilled to a depth of 6.8 km. Geologists decided to test the hypothesis that oil and gas are formed not from dead plants, as most scientists believe, but through mantle fluids - hot mixtures of gases and liquids. Fluids saturated with hydrocarbons seep from the mantle into the earth's crust and accumulate in large quantities. In those years, the idea of the origin of hydrocarbons not from the organic matter of sedimentary strata, but through deep fluids, was new, and many wanted to test it. From this idea it follows that hydrocarbon reserves may contain not only sedimentary, but also volcanic and metamorphic rocks. That's why Sweden for the most part located on an ancient crystal shield, undertook to conduct an experiment.
The Silyan Ring crater with a diameter of 52 km was chosen for drilling. According to geophysical data, at a depth of 500-600 meters there were calcined granites - a possible seal for the underlying hydrocarbon reservoir. Measurements of the acceleration of gravity, by the change of which one can judge the composition and density of rocks lying in the depths, indicated the presence of highly porous rocks at a depth of 5 km - a possible reservoir of oil and gas. The drilling results disappointed scientists and investors who invested $60 million in this work. The strata passed through did not contain industrial reserves of hydrocarbons, only manifestations of oil and gas of clearly biological origin from ancient bitumens. In any case, no one has been able to prove otherwise.
Tool for the Underworld
Drilling the Kola well SG-3 did not require the creation of fundamentally new devices and giant machines. We started working with what we already had: a Uralmash 4E installation with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light alloy pipes. What was really needed at that time was non-standard technological solutions. After all, no one had drilled to such great depths in solid crystalline rocks, and what would happen there was only imagined in general terms. Experienced drillers, however, understood that no matter how detailed the design, the actual well would be much more complex. Five years later, when the depth of the SG-3 well exceeded 7 kilometers, a new Uralmash 15,000 drilling rig was installed - one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic hoisting mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, defying the strong winds raging in the Arctic. A mini-factory, scientific laboratories and a core storage facility grew nearby.
When drilling to shallow depths, a motor that rotates a pipe string with a drill at the end is installed on the surface. The drill is an iron cylinder with teeth made of diamonds or hard alloys - a crown. This crown bites into the rocks and cuts out a thin column - a core. To cool the tool and remove small debris from the well, drilling fluid is pumped into it - liquid clay, which constantly circulates along the shaft, like blood in vessels. After some time, the pipes are raised to the surface, freed from the core, the crown is changed and the column is again lowered into the face. This is how conventional drilling is carried out.
What if the barrel length is 10-12 kilometers with a diameter of 215 millimeters? The pipe string becomes a thin thread lowered into the well. How to manage it? How can you see what's going on at the mine face? Therefore, at the Kola well, miniature turbines were installed at the bottom of the drill string; they were launched by drilling fluid pumped through pipes under pressure. Turbines rotated the carbide bit and cut out the core. The whole technology was well developed, the operator at the control panel saw the rotation of the crown, knew its speed and could control the process.
Every 8-10 meters, a multi-kilometer column of pipes had to be lifted upward. The descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.
Diamond dreams of the Volga region
When in Nizhny Novgorod region Small diamonds were found, which puzzled geologists a lot. Of course, the easiest way was to assume that the gems were brought by a glacier or river waters from somewhere in the north. But what if the local subsoil hides a kimberlite pipe - a reservoir of diamonds? They decided to test this hypothesis in the late 1980s, when the scientific drilling program in Russia was gaining momentum. The drilling site was chosen to the north Nizhny Novgorod, in the center of a giant ring structure that stands out clearly in the relief. Some considered it a meteorite crater, others - an explosion tube or a volcanic crater. Drilling was stopped when the Vorotilovskaya well reached a depth of 5,374 m, of which more than a kilometer was in crystalline basement rocks. No kimberlites were found there, but in fairness it should be said that the dispute about the origin of this structure was also not settled. The facts extracted from the depths were equally suitable for supporters of both hypotheses; in the end, everyone remained with their own opinion. And the well was turned into a deep geolaboratory, which is still in operation today.
The deceit of the number "7"
7 kilometers is the fatal mark for the Kola superdeep. Behind her began the unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. There was no way to keep the barrel vertical. When we covered 12 km for the first time, the well deviated from the vertical by 21°. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the barrel, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be drilled from the 7 kilometer mark. To get a vertical shaft in hard rocks, you need a very rigid bottom of the drill string so that it penetrates into the subsurface like butter. But another problem arises - the well gradually expands, the drill dangles in it, like in a glass, the walls of the barrel begin to collapse and can crush the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - pendulum technology was used. The drill was artificially rocked in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical.
The most common accident on any drilling rig is a broken pipe string. Usually they try to capture the pipes again, but if this happens at great depths, then the problem becomes irreparable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well; such a shaft was abandoned and a new one was started, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes at SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part the well looks like root system giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be a blessing for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive stretch of ancient Archean rocks formed more than 2.5 billion years ago.
In June 1990, SG-3 reached a depth of 12,262 m. They began to prepare the well for digging up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at around 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. Continuing the work required lengthy preparations, equipment upgrades and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola superdeep mine was stopped. After 3 years, she entered the Guinness Book of Records and remains unsurpassed to this day. Now the well is a laboratory for studying the deep interior.
Secret subsoil
SG-3 was a secret facility from the very beginning. The border zone, strategic deposits in the district, and scientific priority are to blame. The first foreigner to visit the drilling site was one of the leaders of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Later, in 1975, an article about the Kola Superdeep was published in Pravda, signed by the Minister of Geology, Alexander Sidorenko. There were still no scientific publications on the Kola well, but some information leaked abroad. The world began to learn more from rumors - the deepest well was being drilled in the USSR.
A veil of secrecy would probably have hung over the well until “perestroika”, if the World Geological Congress had not happened in 1984 in Moscow. They carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world; they even built a new building for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were expected. But foreign colleagues were primarily interested in the Kola superdeep! The Americans did not believe that we had it at all. The depth of the well by that time had reached 12,066 meters. There was no point in hiding the object anymore. In Moscow, the participants of the congress were treated to an exhibition of achievements of Russian geology; one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts all over the world looked in bewilderment at a conventional drill head with worn-out carbide teeth. And this is how they drill the deepest well in the world? Incredible! A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action; 33-meter sections of pipes were removed and disconnected. All around there were piles of drilling heads exactly the same as the one lying on the stand in Moscow.
The delegation from the Academy of Sciences was received by the famous geologist, academician Vladimir Belousov. During the press conference, he was asked a question from the audience:
- What is the most important thing that the Kola well showed?
- Gentlemen! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust,” the scientist answered honestly.
Deep surprise
Of course, they knew something about the crust of the continents. The fact that the continents are composed of very ancient rocks, between 1.5 and 3 billion years old, was not refuted even by the Kola well. However, the geological section compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists had previously imagined. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the speed of seismic waves in the rocks sharply increased, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed a long time ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth’s crust never appeared anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began to appear.
The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that seismic sections in the subsurface are not the boundaries of rock layers different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks can apparently change dramatically, so that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. But the “basalt” raised to the surface from a 12-kilometer depth immediately became granite, although along the way it experienced a severe attack of “caisson disease” - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the fewer high-quality samples fell into the hands of scientists.
The depth contained many surprises. Previously, it was natural to think that with distance from the earth's surface, with increasing pressure, rocks become more monolithic, with a small number of cracks and pores. SG-3 convinced scientists otherwise. Starting from 9 kilometers, the strata turned out to be very porous and literally stuffed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. This fact was later confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. It turned out to be much hotter at depth than expected: as much as 80°! At the 7 km mark the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. Scientists discovered gold mineralization in samples from the Kola well. Interspersed precious metal were in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5-10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places.
The warmth of our home planet
The high temperatures encountered by drillers underground led scientists to the idea of using this virtually inexhaustible source of energy. For example, in young mountains (such as the Caucasus, Alps, Pamir) at a depth of 4 kilometers, the temperature of the subsoil will reach 200°C. This natural battery can be made to work for you. It is necessary to drill two deep wells nearby and connect them with horizontal drifts. Then water is pumped into one well and hot steam is extracted from another, which will be used to heat the city or produce another type of energy. A serious problem for such enterprises can be corrosive gases and fluids, which are not uncommon in seismically active areas. In 1988, the Americans had to complete drilling a well on the shelf of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Alabama, reaching a depth of 7,399 m. The reason for this was the temperature of the subsoil, reaching 232°C, very high pressure and acid gas emissions. In those areas where there are deposits of hot underground water, it is possible to extract it directly from wells from fairly deep horizons. Such projects are suitable for the Caucasus, Pamir, Far East. However, the high cost of work limits the mining depth to four kilometers.
Following the Russian trail
The demonstration of the Kola well in 1984 made a deep impression on the world community. Many countries have begun preparing scientific drilling projects on continents. A similar program was approved in Germany in the late 1980s. The ultra-deep well KTB Hauptborung was drilled from 1990 to 1994; according to the plan, it was supposed to reach a depth of 12 km, but due to unpredictable high temperatures managed to reach only the 9.1 km mark. Thanks to the openness of data on drilling and scientific work, good technology and documentation, the ultra-deep KTV well remains one of the most famous in the world.
The location for drilling this well was chosen in the southeast of Bavaria, on the remains of an ancient mountain range, whose age is estimated at 300 million years. Geologists believed that somewhere here there was a zone of connection between two plates that were once the shores of the ocean. Scientists believe that over time, the tops of the mountains have been worn away, exposing the remains of ancient oceanic crust. Even deeper, ten kilometers from the surface, geophysicists discovered a large body with abnormally high electrical conductivity. They also hoped to clarify its nature with the help of a well. But the main goal was to reach a depth of 10 km in order to gain experience in ultra-deep drilling. Having studied the materials from the Kola SG-3, German drillers decided to first drill a test well 4 km deep in order to get a more accurate idea of the working conditions in the subsurface, test the equipment and take core. At the end of the pilot work, much of the drilling and scientific equipment had to be redone, and some of it had to be created anew.
The main, ultra-deep, KTV Hauptborung well was laid just two hundred meters from the first. For the work, they built an 83-meter tower and created the most powerful for those times drilling rig with a lifting capacity of 800 tons. Many drilling operations have been automated, primarily the mechanism for lowering and lifting pipe strings. The self-guided vertical drilling system made it possible to make an almost vertical shaft. Theoretically, with such equipment it was possible to drill to a depth of 12 kilometers. But the reality, as always, turned out to be more complicated, and the scientists’ plans did not come true.
Problems at the KTV well began after a depth of 7 km, repeating much of the fate of the Kola superdeep well. First, it is believed that due to the high temperature, the vertical drilling system broke down and the shaft went askew. At the end of the work, the face deviated from the vertical by 300 m. Then more complex accidents began - the breakage of the drill string. Just like at Kola, it was necessary to drill new shafts. The narrowing of the well caused certain difficulties - at the top its diameter was 71 cm, at the bottom - 16.5 cm. Endless accidents and high temperature in the bottom -270°C forced the drillers to stop working not far from the cherished goal.
It cannot be said that the scientific results of KTV Hauptborung captured the imagination of scientists. At depth, there were mainly amphibolites and gneisses - ancient metamorphic rocks. The ocean convergence zone and the remains of the oceanic crust were not found anywhere. Perhaps they exist in another place; here there is a small crystalline massif, raised to a height of 10 km. A graphite deposit was discovered a kilometer from the surface.
In 1996, the KTV well, which cost the German budget $338 million, came under the patronage of the Geology Research Center in Potsdam, and it was turned into a laboratory for observing the deep subsoil and a tourism facility.
Why isn't the moon made of cast iron?
“Because there wouldn’t be enough cast iron for the Moon” - this is probably how opponents of the hypothesis that the Moon broke away from the Earth could answer its supporters. This hypothesis, however, did not arise from empty space, and scientists are looking at several areas of the Earth where a piece of the planet the size of the Moon could have been knocked out. The Kola well offered its own option. In the 1970s, Soviet stations delivered several hundred grams of lunar soil to Earth. The substance was divided among the country's leading scientific centers to conduct independent analyses. A tiny sample was also given to the Kola Science Center. Scientists from all over the region came to look at the wonder, including employees of the well, which later became the deepest in the world. Is it a joke? Touch the unearthly dust, look at it through a microscope. Later, experts examined the lunar soil and published a monograph on this subject. By that time, the well in Zapolyarny had reached a decent depth, and the rocks lifted from the shaft were described in detail. And what? Samples of lunar soil, which drillers once looked at in awe, turned out to be one to one diabase from their well, from a depth of 3 km. A hypothesis immediately arose that the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula approximately 1.5 billion years ago - this is the age of the diabases. Although the question involuntarily arose - what size was this peninsula then?..
To drill or not to drill?
The record of the Kola well still remains unsurpassed, although it is certainly possible to go 14 or even 15 km deep into the Earth. However, it is unlikely that such a single effort will provide fundamentally new knowledge about the earth’s crust, while ultra-deep drilling is a very expensive undertaking. The times when it was used to test a variety of hypotheses are long gone. Wells deeper than 6-7 km for purely scientific purposes have almost stopped being drilled. For example, there are only two objects of this kind left in Russia - the Ural SG-4 and the En-Yakhinskaya well in Western Siberia. Leads them state enterprise SPC "Nedra", located in Yaroslavl. There are so many super-deep and deep wells drilled in the world that scientists do not have time to analyze the information. IN last years Geologists strive to study and generalize facts obtained from great depths. Having learned to drill to great depths, people now want to better master the horizon available to them and concentrate their efforts on practical tasks that will be useful now. Thus, in Russia, having completed the scientific drilling program, having drilled all 12 planned ultra-deep wells, they are now working on a system for the territory of the entire state, in which geophysical data obtained by “scanning” the subsoil with seismic waves will be linked with the information obtained by ultra-deep drilling. Without wells, sections of the earth's crust constructed by geophysicists are just models. In order for specific rocks to appear on these diagrams, drilling data is needed. Then geophysicists, whose work is much cheaper than drilling and covers large area, will be able to predict mineral deposits much more accurately.
In the United States, they continue to engage in a program of deep drilling of the ocean floor and are conducting several interesting projects in zones of volcanic and tectonic activity in the earth’s crust. So, in the Hawaiian Islands, researchers hoped to study the underground life of the volcano and get closer to the mantle tongue - the plume, which is believed to have given birth to these islands. They planned to drill a well at the foot of the Mauna Kea volcano to a depth of 4.5 km, but due to the extreme temperatures they could only drill 3 km. Another project is a deep observatory on the San Andreas Fault. Drilling a well through this largest fault on the North American continent began in June 2004 and completed 2 of the 3 planned kilometers. In the deep laboratory they intend to study the origin of earthquakes, which, perhaps, will allow us to better understand the nature of these natural disasters and make their forecast.
Although modern ultra-deep drilling programs are no longer as ambitious as they once were, they clearly have a great future ahead of them. The day is not far off when the turn of great depths will come - they will look for and discover new mineral deposits there. Already, oil and gas production in the United States from depths of 6-7 km is becoming commonplace. In the future, Russia will also have to pump hydrocarbons from such levels. As the Tyumen superdeep well showed, 7 kilometers from the surface there are promising gas fields strata of sedimentary rocks.
It is not for nothing that ultra-deep drilling is compared to the conquest of space. Such programs, with a global scope, absorbing all the best that the country has this moment humanity, give impetus to the development of many industries, technology and ultimately prepare the ground for a new breakthrough in science.
Devil's machinations
Once upon a time, the Kola Superdeep Pipeline found itself at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, well director David Guberman received a call Chief Editor regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee and a host of other different people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil, which the drillers allegedly raised from the depths, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and for good reason! “Scientists have discovered hell,” “Satan has escaped from hell,” the headlines read. As reported in the press, geologists working very far away in Siberia, and perhaps in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists did not have a common opinion on this matter), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to wobble violently from side to side. This means there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered deep showed a temperature of 2,000°C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded...the cries of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing hellish forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic “canard,” but the echoes of that ancient story wandered from newspaper to newspaper for a long time, turning into a kind of folklore. A few years later, when stories about hell had already been forgotten, employees of the Kola Superdeep Well visited Australia to give lectures. They were invited to a reception with the governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “And what the hell did you get up from there?”
The deepest wells in the world
1. Aralsor SG-1, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.8 km. Search for oil and gas.
2. Biikzhalskaya SG-2, Caspian lowland, 1962-1971, depth - 6.2 km. Search for oil and gas.
3. Kola SG-3, 1970-1994, depth - 12,262 m. Design depth - 15 km.
4. Saatli, Azerbaijan, 1977-1990, depth - 8,324 m. Design depth - 11 km.
5. Kolvinskaya, Arkhangelsk region, 1961, depth - 7,057 m.
6. Muruntau SG-10, Uzbekistan, 1984, depth -
3 km. Design depth - 7 km. Search for gold.
7. Timan-Pechora SG-5, Northeast Russia, 1984-1993, depth - 6,904 m, design depth - 7 km.
8. Tyumen SG-6, Western Siberia, 1987-1996, depth - 7,502 m. Design depth - 8 km. Search for oil and gas.
9. Novo-Elkhovskaya, Tatarstan, 1988, depth - 5,881 m.
10. Vorotilovskaya well, Volga region, 1989-1992, depth - 5,374 m. Search for diamonds, study of the Puchezh-Katunka astrobleme.
11. Krivoy Rog SG-8, Ukraine, 1984-1993, depth - 5,382 m. Design depth - 12 km. Search for ferruginous quartzites.
Ural SG-4, Middle Urals. Laid down in 1985. Design depth - 15,000 m. Current depth - 6,100 m. Search for copper ores, study of the structure of the Urals. En-Yakhtinskaya SG-7, Western Siberia. Design depth - 7,500 m. Current depth - 6,900 m. Search for oil and gas.
Wells for oil and gas
early 70s
University, USA, depth - 8,686 m.
Bayden Unit, USA, depth - 9,159 m.
Bertha Rogers, USA, depth - 9,583 m.
80s
Zisterdorf, Austria, depth 8,553 m.
Siljan Ring, Sweden, depth - 6.8 km.
Bighorn, USA, Wyoming, depth - 7,583 m.
KTV Hauptbohrung, Germany, 1990-1994, depth -
9,100 m. Design depth - 10 km. Scientific drilling.
At the limits of life
At the limits of life Extremophile bacteria discovered in rocks raised from a depth of several kilometers DOSSIER One of the most amazing discoveries What scientists have discovered through drilling is the presence of life deep underground. And although this life is represented only by bacteria, its limits extend to incredible depths. Bacteria are ubiquitous. They mastered the underground kingdom, seemingly completely unsuitable for existence. Huge pressures, high temperatures, lack of oxygen and living space - nothing could become an obstacle to the spread of life. According to some estimates, the mass of microorganisms living underground may exceed the mass of all living creatures inhabiting the surface of our planet.
At the beginning of the 20th century, American scientist Edson Bastin discovered bacteria in water from an oil-bearing horizon from a depth of several hundred meters. The microorganisms that lived there did not require oxygen and sun rays, they fed on organic compounds from oil. Bastin suggested that these bacteria have been living in isolation from the surface for 300 million years - since the oil field was formed. But his bold hypothesis remained unclaimed; they simply did not believe in it. At that time it was believed that life was just a thin film on the surface of the planet.
Interest in deep life forms can be quite practical. In the 1980s, the US Department of Energy was looking for safe methods disposal of radioactive waste. For these purposes, it was supposed to use mines in impenetrable rocks, where bacteria feeding on radionuclides live. In 1987, deep drilling of several wells began in South Carolina. From a depth of half a kilometer, scientists took samples, taking all possible precautions so as not to introduce bacteria and air from the surface of the Earth. Several independent laboratories studied the samples, and their results were positive: so-called anaerobic bacteria, which do not require access to oxygen, lived in the deep layers.
The bacteria were also found in the rocks of a gold mine in South Africa at a depth of 2.8 km, where the temperature was 60°C. They also live deep under the ocean floor at temperatures above 100°. As the Kola superdeep well showed, there are conditions for microorganisms to live even at a depth of more than 12 km, since the rocks turned out to be quite porous, saturated aqueous solutions, and where there is water, life is possible.
In an ultra-deep well that opened the Siljan Ring crater in Sweden, microbiologists also discovered colonies of bacteria. It is curious that microorganisms lived in ancient granites. Although these were very dense rocks lying under high pressure, they circulated through a system of micropores and cracks. The groundwater. The real sensation was the thickness of the rocks at a depth of 5.5-6.7 km. It was saturated with a paste of oil with magnetite crystals. One of the possible explanations for this phenomenon was given by the American geologist Thomas Gold, author of the book “The Deep Hot Biosphere.” Gold suggested that magnetite-oil paste is nothing more than a waste product of bacteria that feed on methane coming from the mantle.
Research shows that bacteria are content with truly spartan conditions. The limits of their endurance remain a mystery, but it seems that the lower limit of the bacteria’s habitat is still set by the temperature of the subsurface. They can reproduce at 110°C and can withstand temperatures of 140°C, albeit for a short time. If we assume that on the continents the temperature increases by 20-25° with every kilometer, then living communities can be found down to a depth of 4 km. Under the ocean floor, temperatures do not rise as quickly, and the lower limit of life may lie at a depth of 7 km.
This means that life has a colossal margin of safety. Consequently, the Earth's biosphere cannot be completely destroyed even in the event of the most serious cataclysms, and, probably, on planets devoid of an atmosphere and hydrosphere, microorganisms may well exist in the depths.
You know that people have been unraveling the mysteries of the planet for centuries? They tried to find answers under their feet. TravelAsk will tell you about the largest wells in the world.
What history says
They tried to descend to the depths of the Earth many times. The Chinese were among the first. In the 13th century, they dug a well 1200 meters deep.
In 1930, Europeans broke this record: they drilled into the earth's surface to a depth of three kilometers.
Time passed, and this figure kept growing. So, at the end of the 1950s, the wells already reached 7 kilometers.
The deepest well in the world
In fact, most wells are made during mining. Today the record belongs to the well of the Chayvinskoye field Z-42. It was built in a very short time: just over 70 days. It belongs to the Sakhalin-1 project and is an oil project.
Its depth is 12,700 meters. Just imagine, the highest mountain on Earth is Everest. It goes almost 9 kilometers into the sky. And the deepest trench is the Mariana Trench. It is about 11 kilometers. That is, well Z-42 surpassed all indicators of Mother Nature.
Well in the Murmansk region
But we want to tell you in more detail about one special well. It is located in the Murmansk region, about 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny. It's called the Kola superdeep well. Its depth is 12,262 meters. It is interesting because it was originally created not for mining, but for studying the lithosphere.
The diameter of the well at the surface of the earth is 92 centimeters, and the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 centimeters.
The temperature during drilling at a depth of 5 kilometers was 70 degrees, at a depth of 7 kilometers - 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 kilometers - 220 degrees.
The Kola superdeep well was laid in 1970 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. The main goal was to study volcanic rocks, which are rarely drilled for mining. More than 15 people worked here research laboratories.
They curtailed their activities in 1990, as many accidents occurred here: drill strings often broke off.
Today the facility is abandoned, and the well itself is mothballed and begins to collapse.
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Naturally, all the equipment was dismantled, and the building, which has not been used for a long time, is slowly turning into ruins.
To resume work, a considerable amount is needed - about 100 million rubles, so no one knows whether the well will ever be opened.
Research results
Scientists believed that at a certain depth they would find a clearly defined boundary between granites and basalts. But, alas, all the works did not provide a clear understanding of the nature of the earth’s mantle. And then the researchers even stated that the place to start work was not the most successful.
Road to hell
That's what they call it Kola well. Moreover, there are still many rumors about her related to the other world. So, there are stories that at a depth of 12 kilometers, scientists’ equipment recorded screams and moans coming from the bowels of the Earth.
American television even officially announced this legend: in 1989, the Trinity Broadcasting Network television company told this story to its viewers. Well, then there’s more: in the tabloid newspapers of that time one could also find interesting stories. For example, that scientists heard screams and moans, but did not stop the research. And every kilometer was imprinted with misfortune on the country. So, when the drillers reached the 13-kilometer mark, the USSR collapsed. And at a depth of 14.5 kilometers, they generally discovered voids. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, the researchers lowered a microphone capable of operating at extremely high temperatures and other sensors there. The temperature inside reached 1,100 degrees - well, a real hellfire. And they heard human screams.
In fact acoustic methods Well surveys do not record the actual sound and do not record it with a microphone. They record on seismic receivers the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations excited by the emitter device with a frequency of 10 - 20 kHz and 20 kHz - 2 MHz. Well, we already wrote about the depth: no one reached the 13-kilometer mark.
However, one of the authors of the project D.M. Huberman later said: “When people ask me about this mysterious story, I don’t know what to answer. On the one hand, stories about the “demon” are bullshit. On the other hand, as an honest scientist, I cannot say that I know what exactly happened here. Indeed, a very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing similar was found at the same depth.”.
Perhaps we will end the story on such a mysterious note. Think for yourself, decide for yourself whether this is really the road to hell.
Vladimir Khomutko
Reading time: 4 minutes
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Where is the deepest oil well?
Man has long dreamed of not only flying into space, but also penetrating deep into his native planet. For a long time this dream remained unrealizable, since existing technologies did not allow us to go any significantly deeper into the earth’s crust.
In the thirteenth century, the depth of the wells that the Chinese dug reached a fantastic 1,200 meters for that time, and starting in the thirties of the last century, with the advent of drilling rigs, people in Europe began to drill three-kilometer-long pits. However, all this, so to speak, was only shallow scratches on the earth's surface.
The idea to drill through the upper shell of the earth into a global project took shape in the 60s of the twentieth century. Previously, all assumptions about the structure of the earth's mantle were based on data from seismic activity and other indirect factors. However, the only way to look into the bowels of the Earth in the literal sense of the word was to drill deep wells.
Hundreds of wells drilled for these purposes, both on land and in the ocean, have provided numerous data that help answer a lot of questions about the structure of our planet. However, now ultra-deep workings pursue not only scientific, but also purely practical goals. Next, we look at the deepest wells ever drilled in the world.
This well, 8,553 meters deep, was drilled in 1977 in the area where the Vienna oil and gas province is located. Small oil deposits were discovered in it, and the idea arose to look deeper. At a depth of 7,544 meters, experts found unrecoverable gas reserves, after which the well suddenly collapsed. The OMV company decided to drill a second one, but despite its great depth, the miners were unable to find any minerals.
Austrian well Zistersdorf
Federal Republic of Germany – Hauptbohrung
German specialists were inspired to organize this deep mining operation by the famous Kola superdeep well. In those days, many countries in Europe and the world began to develop their own deep drilling projects. Among them, the Hauptborung project stood out, which was implemented over four years - from 1990 to 1994 in Germany. Despite its relatively small depth (compared to the wells described below) - 9,101 meters, this project has become widely known worldwide due to open access to the obtained geological and drilling data.
United States of America – Baden Unit
The well, 9,159 meters deep, was drilled by the American company Lone Star in the vicinity of the town of Anadarko (USA). Development began in 1970 and continued for 545 days. The cost of its construction was six million dollars, and in terms of materials, 150 diamond bits and 1,700 tons of cement were used.
USA – Bertha Rogers
This mine was also created in the state of Oklahoma in the area of the Anadarko oil and gas province in Oklahoma. Work began in 1974 and lasted 502 days. The drilling was also carried out by the same company as in the previous example. Having passed 9,583 meters, the miners came across a deposit of molten sulfur and were forced to stop work.
This well in the Guinness Book of Records is called “the deepest intrusion into the Earth’s crust made by man.” In May 1970, in the vicinity of the lake with the hair-raising name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, the construction of this grandiose mine began. Initially we wanted to walk 15 kilometers, but due to too high temperatures we stopped at 12,262 meters. Currently, the Kola Superdeep Pipeline is mothballed.
Qatar – BD-04A
Drilled in an oil field called Al-Shaheen for the purpose of geological exploration.
The total depth was 12,289 meters, and the 12-kilometer mark was passed in just 36 days! It was seven years ago.
Russian Federation – OP-11
Since 2003, a whole series of ultra-deep drilling works began as part of the Sakhalin-1 project.
In 2011, Exxon Neftegas drilled the deepest oil well in the world - 12,245 meters - in just 60 days.
It happened at a field called Odoptu.
However, the records didn't end there.
O-14 is a production well in the world that has no analogues in terms of the total length of the trunk - 13,500 meters, as well as the longest horizontal well - 12,033 meters.
It was developed by Russian company NK Rosneft, part of the consortium of the Sakhalin-1 project. This well was developed in a field called Chayvo. The state-of-the-art Orlan drilling platform was used to drill it.
We also note the depth along the shaft of the well constructed in 2013 as part of the same project under number Z-43, the value of which reached 12,450 meters. In the same year, this record was broken at the Chayvinskoye field - the length of the Z-42 shaft reached 12,700 meters, and the length of the horizontal section - 11,739 meters.
In 2014, excavation of the Z-40 mine was completed ( offshore field Chayvo), which until O-14 was the longest well in the world - 13,000 meters, and also had the longest horizontal section - 12,130 m.
In other words, to date, 8 of the 10 longest wells in the world are located in the fields of the Sakhalin-1 project.
Kola superdeep well
The field, called Chayvo, is one of three being developed by the consortium on Sakhalin. It is located in the northeast of the coast of Sakhalin Island. The depth of the seabed in this area varies from 14 to 30 m. The field was put into operation back in 2005.
In general, the international shelf project Sakhalin-1 unites the interests of several large global corporations. It includes three fields located on the offshore shelf Odoptu, Chayvo and Arkutun-Dagi. According to experts, the total available hydrocarbon reserves here are about 236 million tons of oil and almost 487 billion cubic meters natural gas. The Chayvo field was put into operation (as we said above) in 2005, the Odoptu field in 2010, and at the very beginning of 2015 the development of the Arkutun-Dagi field began.
Over the entire existence of the project, it was possible to produce about 70 million tons of oil and 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Currently, the project has encountered some difficulties associated with fluctuations in oil prices, but members of the consortium have confirmed their interest in further work.
