Kola superdeep well (50 photos). Kola superdeep: the terrible secret of the deepest hole on Earth & nbsp The maximum depth of the well on earth

In 2008, the deepest well in the world was finally abandoned, and all lifting mechanisms and structures were dismantled.

A couple of years later, the director of the Kola Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences issued a statement that the well was gradually self-destructing. Since that time, there is no official information about her anymore.

Well depth to date

As of today, the Kola well is one of the largest drilling projects in the world. Its official depth reaches 12,262 m.

Sounds of Hell from the Kola Well

Like any grandiose project created by human hands, the Kola well is shrouded in legends and myths.

This can be seen both in the Mariana Trench (), which we talked about at the beginning of the article, and in.

They say that at the moment when the workers of the deepest well crossed the line of 12,000 m, they began to hear terrible sounds.

Initially, they did not pay any attention, but over time the situation changed dramatically. With the onset of complete silence, sounds of a different nature were heard from the well.

As a result, the scientists decided to record everything that happened at the bottom of the well on film using heat-resistant microphones.

While listening to the recordings, it was possible to hear human cries and screams.

A couple of hours after studying the film, scientists found traces of a strong explosion, the cause of which they could not explain.

Drilling of the Kola super-deep well was suspended for some time.

When the work resumed, everyone still expected to hear people's wailing, but this time everything was quiet.

Suspecting something was wrong, the management began proceedings regarding the origin of strange sounds. However, the frightened workers did not want to comment on the current situation and in every possible way avoided any questions.

A few years later, when the project was officially put on hold, scientists suggested that the sounds were due to movement.

Some time later, this explanation was rejected as untenable. No other explanation was offered.

Secrets and mysteries of the Kola well

In 1989, the Kola well began to be called the "road to hell", because of the sounds coming from it. There is an opinion that with each next drilled kilometer, on the way to the 13th, one or another cataclysm happened. As a result, the Soviet Union collapsed.

However, the relationship between the drilling of the Kola super-deep well and the collapse of a superpower may be of interest only to those who believe that and others are supernatural "places of power."

There is an opinion that the workers managed to reach a depth of 14.5 km, and it was then that the equipment recorded some underground rooms. The temperature in these rooms exceeded 1000°C.

They also clearly audible and even recorded human cries. However, this whole story is not supported by facts.

Dimensions of the deepest well

The depth of the world's deepest well on the Kola Peninsula is officially registered at around 12,262 m.

The diameter of the upper part is 92 cm, the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 cm.

The maximum temperature did not exceed 220°C. Inexplicable in this whole story are only sounds of unknown origin.

Benefits of drilling the Kola well

• Thanks to this project, new drilling methods were achieved, as well as improved equipment.
• Geologists have been able to discover new locations of valuable minerals.
• It was possible to debunk many different theories, for example, conjectures regarding the basalt layer of our planet.

Worldwide ultra-deep wells

As of today, there are approximately 25 ultra-deep wells, most of which are located in the republics of the former USSR.

Others also have a number of ultra-deep wells. We present the most famous among them.

• . Silyan Ring - 6800 m.
• . Tasym South-East - 7050 m.
• . Bighorn - 7583 m.
• . Zisterdorf - 8553 m.
• USA. University - 8686 m.
• Germany. KTB-Oberpfalz - 9101 m.
• USA. Beidat Unit - 9159 m.
• USA. Bertha Rogers - 9583 m.

World records for ultra-deep wells in the world

1. In 2008, the oil well Maersk () with a depth of 12,290 m became the new depth record holder.
2. In 2011, during a project called "Sakhalin-1" (), it was possible to drill a well up to a mark of 12,345 m.
3. In 2013, the well of the Chayvinskoye field (Russia) set a new record of 12,700 m. However, it was not drilled vertically down, but at an angle to the surface.

Photo of the Kola well

Looking at the photo of the Kola well, it is hard to imagine that once life was in full swing here, and many people worked for the good of a great country.

Now there is nothing here but garbage and remnants of its former greatness. Reinforced concrete walls and empty, abandoned rooms with randomly scattered things act depressingly. Silence reigns all around.

The stories associated with the Kola well have not subsided so far. At present, scientists have not given a final answer about the origin of mystical sounds.

In this regard, there are more and more new theories trying to explain this phenomenon. Perhaps in the near future, scientists will be able to find out the nature of the "hellish sounds".

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In the second half of the 20th century, the world became sick with ultra-deep drilling. In the United States, a new program for studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project) was being prepared. Built specifically for this project, the Glomar Challenger vessel spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottom, 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 success of the United States, resulted in the program "Study of the bowels of the Earth and ultra-deep drilling", but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite centuries of history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new thing. After all, it was about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided by political motives rather than scientific ones. He did not want to lag behind the United States.

The well-known oilman, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolay Timofeev, headed the newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology. He was instructed to substantiate the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts issued a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with the technology of tomorrow, the equipment that is already there is enough. The main problem is the 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 devices will not withstand such heating. It was necessary to look for a place where the bowels are not so hot ...

Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. The report, prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth, said: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola shield has cooled down, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the bowels 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. Then 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 on the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish, it means "Under the wolf mountain", although there is no mountain or wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

The drilling of 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: the Uralmash 4E unit with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy pipes. What was really needed at that time was non-standard technological solutions. Indeed, in solid crystalline rocks no one has drilled to such a great depth, and what will be there, they imagined only in general terms. Experienced drillers, however, understood that no matter how detailed the project was, the real well would be much more complicated. After 5 years, when the depth of the SG-3 well exceeded 7 kilometers, a new drilling rig "Uralmash 15,000" was installed - one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic tripping mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig has turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, recalcitrant to the strong winds raging in the Arctic. A mini-factory, scientific laboratories and a core storage facility have grown up nearby.

When drilling to shallow depths, a motor that rotates a string of pipes 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 of them a thin column - core. To cool the tool and remove small debris from the well, drilling fluid is injected into it - liquid clay, which circulates all the time through the wellbore, 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 lowered into the bottomhole again. This is how normal drilling works.

And if the barrel length is 10-12 kilometers with a diameter of 215 millimeters? The string of pipes becomes the thinnest thread lowered into the well. How to manage it? How to see what is happening in the face? Therefore, at the Kola well, miniature turbines were installed at the bottom of the drill string, they were launched by drilling fluid injected through pipes under pressure. The turbines rotated the carbide bit and cut out the core. The whole technology was well developed, the operator on 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 up. The descent and ascent took a total of 18 hours.

7 kilometers - the mark for the Kola superdeep fatal. Behind it began the unknown, many accidents and a continuous struggle with rocks. The barrel could not be kept upright. When 12 km were covered 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 trunk, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be re-drilled from the mark of 7 kilometers. To get a vertical hole in hard formations, you need a very rigid bottom of the drill string so that it enters the subsoil like butter. But another problem arises - the well is gradually expanding, the drill dangles in it, as 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 - the pendulum technology was applied. The drill was artificially swung 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 pipe string break. Usually they try to seize the pipes again, but if this happens at a great depth, then the problem becomes unrecoverable. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well, they threw such a hole and started a new one, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes on SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part, the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be happiness for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive segment of ancient Archean rocks that 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 drilling up to 14 km, and then an accident occurred again - at the level of 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long preparation, updating equipment and new costs. In 1994, drilling of the Kola Superdeep was stopped. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed.

SG-3 was a secret facility from the very beginning. Both the border zone, and strategic deposits in the district, and scientific priority are to blame. The first foreigner to visit the rig was one of the leaders of the Academy of Sciences of Czechoslovakia. 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 is being drilled in the USSR. The veil of secrecy, probably, would have hung over the well until the very “perestroika” had it not been for the World Geological Congress in Moscow in 1984. Carefully prepared for such a major event in the scientific world, a new building was even built for the Ministry of Geology - many participants were expecting. 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 congress participants were treated to an exhibition of achievements in Russian geology, one of the stands was dedicated to the SG-3 well. Experts from all over the world looked in bewilderment at an ordinary drill head with worn 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, and 33-meter pipe sections were taken out and disconnected. There were heaps of exactly the same drilling heads around, like the one that lay on the stand in Moscow. From the Academy of Sciences, the delegation was received by a well-known geologist, Academician Vladimir Belousov. During the press conference, he was asked a question from the audience: - What was the most important thing shown by the Kola well? - Lord! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust, - the scientist answered honestly.

The section of the Kola well refuted the two-layer model of the earth's crust and showed that the seismic sections in the bowels are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the properties of the stone with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties of rocks, apparently, can 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 depth of 12 km immediately became granite, although it experienced a severe attack of "caisson sickness" along the way - the core crumbled and disintegrated into flat plaques. The further the well went, the fewer 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 an increase in 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 crammed with cracks through which aqueous solutions circulated. Later, this fact was confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. At depth it turned out to be much hotter than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the mark of 7 km, the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of the precious metal were found 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.

But, once the Kola Superdeep was at the center of a global scandal. One fine morning in 1989, the director of the well, David Guberman, received a phone call from the editor-in-chief of the regional newspaper, the secretary of the regional committee, and a host of other people. Everyone wanted to know about the devil that the drillers allegedly raised from the bowels, as reported by some newspapers and radio stations around the world. The director was taken aback, and - it was from what! "Scientists have discovered hell", "Satan has escaped from hell" - read the headlines. As reported in the press, geologists working very far in Siberia, and maybe in Alaska or even the Kola Peninsula (journalists had no consensus on this matter), were drilling at a depth of 14.4 km, when suddenly the drill began to dangle strongly from side to side. So, there is a big hole below, the scientists thought, apparently, the center of the planet is empty. Sensors lowered into the depths showed a temperature of 2,000 ° C, and super-sensitive microphones sounded ... the screams of millions of suffering souls. As a result, drilling was stopped due to fears of releasing infernal forces to the surface. Of course, Soviet scientists refuted this journalistic "duck", but the echoes of that old 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 visited Australia with lectures. They were invited to a reception by the Governor of Victoria, a flirtatious lady, who greeted the Russian delegation with the question: “What the hell did you raise from there?”

From here you can listen to hellish sounds from the well.

In our time, the Kola well (SG-3), which is the deepest borehole in the world, will be liquidated due to unprofitability, Interfax reports, citing a statement by Boris Mikov, head of the territorial department of the Federal Property Management Agency for the Murmansk region. The exact closing date of the project has not yet been determined.

Earlier, the prosecutor's office of the Pechenga district fined the head of the SG-3 enterprise for salary delays and threatened to initiate a criminal case. As of April 2008, the well's staffing included 20 people. In the 1980s, about 500 people worked at the well.

Film: Kola Superdeep: Last Salute

The Kola superdeep well is the deepest borehole in the world. It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny, on the territory of the geological Baltic Shield. Its depth is 12,262 meters. Unlike other ultra-deep wells that were made for oil production or exploration, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for the study of the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovichic boundary comes close to the Earth's surface.

The Kola superdeep well was laid in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin, in 1970.
The strata of sedimentary rocks by that time were well studied during oil production. It was more interesting to drill where volcanic rocks about 3 billion years old (for comparison: the age of the Earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years) come to the surface. For mining, such rocks are rarely drilled deeper than 1-2 km. It was assumed that already at a depth of 5 km the granite layer will be replaced by basalt.

On June 6, 1979, the well broke the record of 9,583 meters previously held by the Bertha Rogers well (an oil well in Oklahoma). In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.

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 dungeon can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below are indeed like screams and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that haunted the Kola superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers.

Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures from which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. Once the cable seemed to be pulled from below - and cut off. Subsequently, when drilling in the same place, no remnants of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents is still a mystery. However, they were not at all the reason for stopping the drilling of the bowels of the Baltic Shield.

Core extraction to the surface.

Extracted core.

Although it was expected that a pronounced boundary between granites and basalts would be found, only granites were found in the core throughout the depth. However, due to high pressure, pressed granites greatly changed their physical and acoustic properties.
As a rule, the lifted core crumbled from active gas release into sludge, as it could not withstand a sharp change in pressure. It was possible to take out a solid piece of core only with a very slow rise of the drill string, when the “excess” gas, while still in a state of high pressure, had time to exit the rock.
The density of cracks at great depths, contrary to expectations, increased. At depth, water was also present, filling the cracks.

Tricone chisel.

Eruptive breccia of basalts from a depth of 2977.8 m

“We have the deepest hole in the world - this is how you should use it!” - bitterly exclaims the permanent director of the research and production center "Kola Superdeep" David Guberman. In the first 30 years of the existence 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 order 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 doomsday began,” says Huberman. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will 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 70 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was roasting more than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. The Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the range up to 12,262 meters.

Another surprise: life on planet Earth arose, it turns out, 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 types of fossilized microorganisms were found - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sedimentary rocks, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and utterly destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.

There were also almost fantastic sensations. When in the late 70s the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, the researchers of the Kola Science Center found that it was like two drops of water similar 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 exactly where. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the moon, did nothing sensible with it. Placed in sealed containers and left for research to future generations.

In the history of the Kola Superdeep, it was not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not - but it was in that 1995 that a powerful explosion of an unknown nature was heard in the depths of the mine.

“When I was asked about this mysterious story at UNESCO, 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 here. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion ... A few days later, nothing of the kind was found at the same depth, ”recalls Academician David Huberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the predictions of Alexei Tolstoy from the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" were confirmed. At a depth of more than 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. Gold in it is 78 grams 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.

This is what the Kola Superdeep looks like now, in a deplorable state.

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 the existing technologies did not allow any significant deepening into the earth's crust.

In the thirteenth century, the depth of the wells dug by the Chinese reached a fantastic 1,200 meters for that time, and starting from the thirties of the last century, with the advent of drilling rigs, people in Europe began to drill three-kilometer pits. However, all this, so to speak, was only shallow scratches on the earth's surface.

The idea to drill the upper earth shell into a global project took shape in the 60s of the twentieth century. Prior to this, all assumptions about the structure of the earth's mantle were based on seismic activity data 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 this purpose, 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 are pursuing 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. OMV decided to drill a second one, but despite its great depth, the miners failed to find any minerals.

Austrian well Zistersdorf

Federal Republic of Germany – Hauptbohrung

The German specialists were inspired to organize this deep mining by the famous Kola super-deep well. At that time, many states of Europe and the world began to develop their deep drilling projects. Among them, the Hauptborung project stood apart, which was implemented for four years - from 1990 to 1994 in Germany. Despite its relatively small (compared to the wells described below) depth - 9,101 meters, this project has become widely known worldwide due to open access to the received geological and drilling data.

United States of America - Baden Unit

A well with a depth of 9,159 meters 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 chisels and 1,700 tons of cement were used for it.

United States – Bertha Rogers

This production was also created in the state of Oklahoma in the area of ​​the oil and gas province of Anadarko in Oklahoma. Work began in 1974 and lasted 502 days. The drilling was also carried out by the company, as in the previous example. Having passed 9,583 meters, the miners ran into a deposit of molten sulfur, and were forced to stop work.

This well was named by the Guinness Book of Records as "the deepest intrusion into the Earth's crust by man." In May 1970, in the vicinity of the lake with the furious name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, the construction of this grandiose mine working began. Initially, they wanted to walk 15 kilometers, but due to too high temperatures they stopped at 12,262 meters. At present, the Kola Superdeep 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 mark of 12 kilometers was covered in just 36 days! It was seven years ago.

Russian Federation - OP-11

Starting from 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 was at a field called Odoptu.

However, the records did not end there.

O-14 is a production well in the world that has no analogues in terms of the total length of the wellbore - 13,500 meters, as well as the longest horizontal well - 12,033 meters.

It was developed by the Russian company NK Rosneft, which is a member of the consortium of the Sakhalin-1 project. This well was developed in a field called Chayvo. For its drilling, the ultra-modern drilling platform "Orlan" was used.

We also note the depth along the trunk of the well constructed in 2013 under the same project under the 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 trunk reached 12,700 meters, and the length of the horizontal section - 11,739 meters.

In 2014, the drilling of the Z-40 development (the offshore Chayvo field) was completed, which, before O-14, was the longest well in the world in terms of the borehole - 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 Chayvo field is one of three being developed by the consortium in Sakhalin. It is located 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 in 2005.

In general, the Sakhalin-1 international offshore project unites the interests of several large world corporations. It includes three fields located on the sea shelf of Odoptu, Chaivo 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 of natural gas. The Chaivo 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 was started.

During the entire existence of the project, it was possible to extract 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 the members of the consortium have confirmed their interest in further work.

At a depth of 410-660 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, the 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 super-deep 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 to make, says Lenta.ru.

The pioneers of ultra-deep drilling were the Americans. True, in the vastness of the ocean: in a pilot project, they involved the ship Glomar Challenger, designed just for this purpose. In the meantime, the corresponding theoretical base was being actively developed in the Soviet Union.

In May 1970, in the north of the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, drilling began on the Kola superdeep well. As expected, this was timed to coincide with the centenary of the birth of Lenin. Unlike other ultra-deep wells, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes and even organized a special exploration expedition.

The drilling site was unique: it is on the Baltic Shield in the Kola Peninsula region that ancient rocks come to the surface. Many of them are three billion years old (our planet itself is 4.5 billion years old). In addition, here the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzug rift trough is 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 in the extraction of oil and gas. Then the well stood idle for a whole year: the installation was modified for turbine drilling. After the upgrade, it was possible to drill about 60 meters per month.

A depth of seven kilometers brought surprises: the alternation of hard and not very dense rocks. Accidents have become more frequent, and many caverns have appeared in the wellbore. Drilling continued until 1983, when the depth of SG-3 reached 12 kilometers. After that, the scientists gathered a large conference and talked about their successes.

However, due to careless handling of the drill, a five-kilometer section remained in the mine. For several months they tried to get it, but did not succeed. It was decided to start drilling again from a depth of seven kilometers. Due to the complexity of the operation, not only the main shaft 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, subsequently the well was mothballed, but in fact it was abandoned.

Nevertheless, many discoveries were made at the Kola superdeep well. Engineers have created a whole system of ultra-deep drilling. The difficulty was not only in depth, but also in high temperatures (up to 200 degrees Celsius) due to the intensity of the work of the drills.

Scientists not only moved deep into the Earth, but also raised rock samples and cores for analysis. By the way, it was they who studied the lunar soil and found out 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 more than nine kilometers, they found deposits of minerals, including gold: in the olivine layer it 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 pass into a super-strong basalt layer: in fact, Archean gneisses, which are traditionally classified as fractured rocks, were located behind it. This made a kind of revolution in geological and geophysical science and completely changed the traditional ideas about the bowels 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 the assumption of scientists, it is they who are responsible for the formation of ores, but before it was believed that this occurs only at much shallower depths.

Among other things, it turned out that the temperature of the bowels is slightly higher than expected: at a depth of six kilometers, a temperature gradient of 20 degrees Celsius per kilometer was obtained instead of 16 expected. The radiogenic origin of the heat flux was established, which also did not agree with previous hypotheses.

In the deep layers more than 2.8 billion years old, scientists have found 14 types of petrified microorganisms. This made it possible to shift the time of the origin of life on the planet by one and a half billion years ago. The researchers also found that there are no sedimentary rocks at the depths and there is methane, forever burying the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons.