Kola Superdeep Well Since the end of the 19th century, it has been believed that the Earth consists of a crust, a mantle, and a core. At the same time, no one really could tell where one layer ends and the next one begins. Scientists did not even know what, in fact, these layers consist of. Some 30 years ago, researchers were sure that the layer of granites begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to three kilometers, and then basalts come. The mantle was supposed to be at a depth of 15-18 kilometers.

An ultra-deep well, which began to be drilled in the USSR on the Kola Peninsula, showed that scientists were wrong ...

Dive for three billion years

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 1960s in several countries at once. The Americans were the first to drill ultra-deep wells, and they tried to do it in places where, according to seismic studies, the earth's crust should have been thinner. These places, according to calculations, were at the bottom of the oceans, and the area near the island of Maui from the Hawaiian group was considered the most promising, where ancient rocks lie under the very ocean floor and the earth's mantle is located approximately at a depth of five kilometers under a four-kilometer water column. Alas, both attempts to break through the earth's crust in this place ended in failure at a depth of three kilometers.

The first domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR that a well should be created on the continent. Although it would take an incomparably longer time to drill, he thought, the well would be far more scientifically valuable. The drilling site was chosen on the Kola Peninsula, which is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which consists of the most ancient terrestrial rocks known to mankind. The multi-kilometer section of the shield layers, as conceived by scientists, was supposed to show a picture of the history of the planet over the past three billion years.

Deeper, and deeper, and deeper...

The start of work after almost five years of preparation was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin in 1970. The project was started in earnest. The well operated 16 research laboratories, each the size of an average plant; the project was personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR. Ordinary employees received a triple salary. Everyone was guaranteed an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. It is not surprising that getting to the Kola Superdeep was much more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps.

The appearance of the well was capable of disappointing an outside observer. No elevators and spiral staircases leading deep into the Earth. Only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters went underground. In general, the Kola super-deep can be imagined as a thin needle piercing the earth's thickness. The drill located at the end of this needle with numerous sensors, after several hours of work, was raised for almost a whole day for inspection, reading and repair, and then lowered for a day. Faster is impossible: the strongest composite cable (drill string) could break under its own weight.

What was happening at depth at the time of drilling was not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters were transmitted upward with a minute delay. Nevertheless, the drillers said that even such contact with the dungeon was sometimes frightening in earnest. The sounds coming from below were like shrieks 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 could take on this form 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.

In 1983, when the depth of the well reached 12,066 meters, work was temporarily stopped: it was decided to prepare materials on ultra-deep drilling for the International Geological Congress, which was planned to be held in 1984 in Moscow. On it, foreign scientists first learned about the very existence of the Kola Superdeep, all information about which had been classified until then. Work resumed on September 27, 1984. However, during the first descent of the drill, an accident occurred - the drill string broke again. Drilling had to continue from a depth of 7,000 meters, creating a new shaft, and by 1990 this new branch had reached 12,262 meters, which was an absolute record for ultra-deep wells, broken only in 2008. Drilling was stopped in 1992, this time, as it turned out, forever. There were no funds for further work.

Discoveries and finds

The discoveries made at the Kola Superdeep have made a real revolution in our knowledge of the structure of the earth's crust. Theorists have promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield will remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. This means that a well can be drilled almost up to 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at the fifth kilometer the temperature exceeded 700°C, at the seventh - over 1200°C, and at a depth of twelve it was roasting more than 2200°C.

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. It was believed that there is a surface layer (young rocks), then granites, basalts, a mantle and a core should go. But the granites turned out to be three kilometers lower than expected. The basalts that were supposed to lie under them were not found at all. An incredible surprise for scientists was the abundance of cracks and voids at a depth of more than 10 kilometers. In these voids, the drill swayed like a pendulum, which led to serious difficulties in work due to its deviation from the vertical axis. In the voids, the presence of water vapor was recorded, which moved there at high speed, as if carried by some unknown pumps. These pairs created the very sounds that thrilled the drillers.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, the hypothesis of the writer Alexei Tolstoy about the olivine belt, expressed in the novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin, was confirmed. At a depth of more than 9.5 kilometers, they discovered a real storehouse of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, which turned out to be 78 grams per ton. By the way, industrial production is carried out at a concentration of 34 grams per ton.

Another surprise: life on Earth arose, it turns out, one and a half billion years earlier than expected. At depths where, as it was believed, there could be no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were found (the age of these layers exceeded 2.8 billion years). At even greater depths, where there are no longer sedimentary rocks, methane appeared in high concentrations, which finally refuted the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.

It is impossible not to mention the discovery made when comparing the lunar soil delivered by the Soviet space station at the end of the 70s from the surface of the Moon, and samples taken at the Kola well from a depth of 3 kilometers. It turned out that these samples are like two peas in a pod. Some astronomers saw this as evidence that the Moon had once broken away from the Earth as a result of a cataclysm (possibly a collision of the planet with a large asteroid). However, according to others, this similarity only indicates that the Moon was formed from the same gas and dust cloud as the Earth, and at the initial geological stages they “evolved” in the same way.

Kola Superdeep was ahead of its time

The Kola well showed that it is possible to go deep into the Earth for 14, and even 15 kilometers. However, one such well is hardly capable of providing fundamentally new knowledge about the earth's crust. This requires a whole network of wells drilled at different points on the earth's surface. But the times when ultra-deep wells were drilled for purely scientific purposes seem to have passed. Too expensive this pleasure. Modern ultra-deep drilling programs are no longer as ambitious as they used to be, and pursue practical goals.

This is mainly the discovery and extraction of minerals. In the United States, oil and gas production from depths of 6-7 kilometers is already becoming commonplace. In the future, Russia will also start pumping hydrocarbon raw materials from such levels. However, even those deep wells that are being drilled now bring a lot of valuable information that geologists strive to generalize in order to obtain a complete picture of at least the surface layers of the earth's crust. But what lies below will remain a mystery for a long time to come. Only scientists working on ultra-deep wells like the Kola can reveal it with the help of the most modern scientific equipment. Such wells in the future will become for humanity a kind of telescopes into the mysterious underworld of the planet, about which we know no more than about distant galaxies.

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 Chinese, 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 shallow (compared to the wells described below) depth of 9,101 meters, this project has become widely known worldwide due to the 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 wellbore 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 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 related to fluctuations in oil prices, but the members of the consortium have confirmed their interest in further work.

Kola

The Kola super-deep well is the deepest on earth. It is located in the Murmansk region, about 10 km from the city of Zapolyarny. Its depth is 12262 m. The most interesting thing is that, unlike most other wells that were created only for the extraction of minerals, Kola was originally created to study the lithosphere (the solid shell of the planet).

The Kola Superdeep was laid on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin in 1970. The researchers were interested in studying volcanic rocks, which are rarely drilled in mining. It was assumed that at a depth of about 4-5 km the granite layer will be replaced by basalt. Drilling began in May. It should be noted that during the work there were no special problems. However, after a depth of seven thousand meters, the drilling head entered strong layered rocks, when passing through which the wellbore began to crumble. Therefore, the drill string often became jammed with rock, as a result of which the head simply broke off when lifting. And since the lost part of the column was cemented, drilling continued with a large deviation from the target. Similar accidents were repeated quite often. It should be noted that in the best years more than 15 research laboratories worked at the well.

In 1983, the depth of the object was 12066 meters. At this point, it was decided to suspend work in order to prepare for the International Geological Congress, which was held in Moscow a year later. In 1984, drilling continued. And then a new accident broke off the drill string. It was decided to drill a new branch from a depth of seven thousand meters. By 1990, the depth of the branch was 12,262 m, and when the column broke for the umpteenth time, all work was curtailed.

Currently, the facility is considered abandoned, the well itself is mothballed and begins to collapse, all equipment has been dismantled, and the building has turned into ruins. To restore everything around, it will take about 100 million rubles. Whether this will ever happen, no one knows.

As for research, scientists believed that at a certain depth they would find a clearly defined boundary between granites and basalts, but only granites were found throughout the depth. There was also a problem with the core (a rock sample extracted from a well) - when lifted, the samples crumbled from active gas release, because they could not withstand the instant pressure change. However, in some cases, scientists were able to remove a solid piece of core, but only if it was raised very slowly to the surface.

Speaking in general about the results of the activity, they were quite unexpected for scientists, since they did not give a clear understanding of the nature of the earth's mantle. In addition, the researchers subsequently stated that the place to start work was not the most successful - those rocks that were at a depth of about 2000 m could be found on the surface of the earth near Kola. The temperature at a depth of 5 km was 70 °C, at 7 km it was 120 °C, and at 12 km it was 220 °C.

There are many rumors about Kolskaya related to the other world. For example, the well is often called the "road to hell" - according to the legend, at a depth of 12 km, the equipment of scientists recorded screams and groans emanating from the bowels of the Earth. Of course, these are all stupid speculations, if only because the sound itself is not recorded, but a seismic receiver is used.

By the way, at the moment Kola is sealed and has been in this state for almost 20 years. At the same time, there is a small chance that the well will someday be printed and work on it will continue. In this case, people will be able to get new information about what the depths of our planet hide. True, a fantastically large amount of funds must be allocated to continue the work.

Maersk Oil BD-04A

UPDATE! Since this article was written a long time ago, a lot has changed over the years. So, at the moment, Kola is not at all the deepest well on earth. Moreover, she is not even in the top three!

In third place is the oil well Maersk Oil BD-04A, whose depth reaches 12,290 meters. It is located in the Al Shaheen oil field in Qatar.

The company Maersk (Denmark) is better known for its transport business. In particular, its container transportation. Its history dates back to the beginning of the 20th century.

Odoptu-sea

The silver award goes to the oil well Odoptu-Sea, drilled at an acute angle to the surface of the earth, whose depth is 12,345 meters.

Sakhalin-1 is an oil and gas project that was decided to be implemented on Sakhalin Island, more precisely, on its northeastern shelf. One of its branches is the creation of the Odoptu-Sea well. The development of oil (more than 2 billion barrels) and natural gas (485 billion cubic meters) is envisaged.

30% of the project belongs to ExxonMobil, the same amount belongs to SODECO, and the remaining 40% is equally divided between ONGC and Rosneft. As of the current moment, this is one of the largest Russian projects, where truly huge investments from abroad have been invested.

It is noteworthy that the Z-42 well, created as part of the Sakhalin-1 project, which is described a few lines above, is the leader today. The depth of Z-42 reaches up to 12,700 meters. The most interesting thing is that some 73 days were spent on the construction of the well, which by world standards is simply an excellent result.

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.

But

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

Film: Kola Superdeep: Last Salute

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 disease” 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.



H about, 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?”

W 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

Saturday, 29 Dec. 2012

One of the most ambitious projects of the Soviet era was the Kola super-deep well with a depth of 12,262 meters. This record remains unsurpassed to this day.

Year of issue: 2012

The country: Russia (TV Center)

Genre: Documentary

Duration: 00:25:21

Director: Vladimir Batrakov

Description: The authors of the report will talk about the history and goals of this bold scientific experiment, talk with its direct participants, and explain the results in a popular way. Viewers will be able to see what condition the rig is in at the moment.

Drilling began in 1970, and the work was completely classified until the mid-1980s.

In 1992, drilling was stopped due to lack of funding - the well was never brought to the planned depth of 15 kilometers. But even at the existing depth, unique scientific data were obtained.

In addition, the legend about the sounds of terrible human screams allegedly recorded at great depths is connected with the Kola superdeep well, which caused the most incredible assumptions in the press...

Additional Information:

Dig to Beelzebub: In the 1970s, a team of Soviet explorers drilled on the Kola Peninsula, resulting in the deepest borehole in the world. A large-scale project was conceived for research purposes, but unexpectedly led to almost hysteria around the world. According to rumors, Soviet scientists stumbled on the "road to hell", writes SPIEGEL ONLINE.

“A chilling picture: in the middle of the deserted expanses of the Kola Peninsula, 150 km north of Murmansk, an abandoned drilling rig rises. Barracks for employees, rooms with laboratories crowd around. the author continues.

On May 24, 1970, when the USSR and the USA raced to explore space, a project was launched in the Soviet Union on the border with Finland and Norway to drill an ultra-deep well at the site of the geological Baltic Shield. For several decades, the Kola superdeep well has "swallowed" millions, allowing scientists to make some rather serious scientific discoveries. However, the most high-profile find at a depth of more than 10 km turned the research project into an event with a deeply religious background, in which conjecture, truth and lies mixed together, creating sensational reports in all the world's media.

Shortly after the start of drilling, the Kola Superdeep became the Soviet exemplary project, a few years later the SG-3 broke the record of 9583 m, previously held by the Burt-Rogers well in Oklahoma. But this was not enough for the Soviet leadership - scientists had to reach a depth of 15 km.

"On the way to the bowels of the earth, scientists made unexpected discoveries: for example, they managed to predict earthquakes based on unusual sounds from a well. At a depth of 3 thousand meters, a substance was found in the layers of the lithosphere, almost identical to material from the surface of the Moon. After 6 thousand meters it was gold was discovered. However, scientists became increasingly concerned that the deeper they penetrated, the higher the temperatures became, which made it difficult to work," the article says. Unlike preliminary calculations, the temperature was not 100 degrees Celsius, but 180.

Around the same time, rumors spread that at a depth of 14 km the drill unexpectedly moved from side to side - a sign that it had landed in a giant cavity. Temperatures in the passage zone went off scale over a thousand degrees, and after a heat-resistant microphone was lowered into the mine to record the sound of the movement of lithospheric plates, the drillers heard soul-chilling sounds. At first they mistook them for the sounds of malfunctioning machinery, but then, after the equipment was adjusted, their worst suspicions were confirmed. The sounds were reminiscent of the cries and groans of thousands of martyrs, the article says.

"Where exactly this legend originates from is still unknown," the author continues. For the first time in English, it was voiced in 1989 on the air of the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which took the story from a Finnish newspaper report. The Kola super-deep well began to be called the "road to hell." The stories of the frightened drillers were published by Finnish and Swedish newspapers - they claimed that "the Russians let the demon out of hell."

Drilling work was stopped - they were explained by insufficient funding. On instructions from above, the drilling rig was to be dumped - but there was not enough money for that either.

27.04.2011

Kola Superdeep Well(SG-3) - recognized as the deepest borehole in the world. The mine is located on the territory of the geological Baltic Shield in the Murmansk region, 10 km west of the city of Zapolyarny. Its total depth is 12,262 meters.

Its main difference from other ultra-deep wells that were drilled for gas, oil or geological exploration, the Kola super-deep was built exclusively for scientific research of the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovichich boundary comes closest to the Earth's surface.

SG-3 record well

The first stage of drilling of the SG-3 well, the Kola super-deep well, was completed. It was launched in May 1970 and by the beginning of 1975 had sunk 7263 meters into the bowels.

A lot of it? Or is drilling to such a depth no longer surprising? In Ukraine, a well "Shevchenkovskaya-1" was drilled with a depth of more than 7,500 meters.

Ten wells in different places of the Soviet Union exceeded 6 thousand meters. The deepest well in the world was drilled in the USA - 9583 meters. In such an environment, the Kola Superdeep seems ordinary, one of many superdeep.

• Firstly, because this well is so far the deepest in the world of those drilled in the crystalline rocks of the Precambrian.
• Secondly, the Kola superdeep well is a new word in drilling technology. For the first time in world practice, a significant part of the well was drilled "open hole", that is, without casing.

Every meter of the well along its entire length was carefully studied, each column of the extracted rock was examined.

The thickness of the earth's crust is not the same. Under the ocean, in some places it thins out to 5 kilometers.

On the continents in areas of ancient folding it is 20-30, and under mountain ranges up to 75 kilometers. The earth's crust is called the skin of the planet.

Sometimes, in order to more figuratively show the deep structure of the Earth, a comparison is made with an egg. In this case, the bark plays the role of the shell.

Despite such a seemingly insignificant thickness, the "shell" of the Earth has so far remained inaccessible to direct research.

The main information about it was obtained indirectly - by geophysical methods. For example, it has been established from reflected seismic waves that the earth's crust has a layered structure.

The continental crust consists of sedimentary, granite and basalt layers; there is no granite layer in the oceanic crust.

Below the earth's crust, seismic observations have identified the mantle (if we continue the comparison with the egg - protein), and in the center of the Earth, the core - the yolk.

Gravimetric, magnetometric, nuclear, geothermal methods are also used to study the earth's depths. They allow you to determine the density of rocks at great depths, establish gravity anomalies, the characteristics of the magnetic field, temperature and dozens of other parameters.

Yet many basic questions of geology remain unanswered. Only direct penetration into the bowels will finally help to remove these question marks of geology.

Kola Superdeep

The Kola Superdeep is laid on the Baltic Crystalline Shield. This is the oldest formation of the earth's crust, which in the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas, Karelia, the Baltic Sea and in part of the Leningrad Region comes close to the earth's surface.

It can be assumed that the basalt layer here lies at a depth of slightly more than 7 kilometers. The shield is composed of ancient, highly altered rocks: Archean gneisses, crystalline schists, intrusive rocks up to 3.5 billion years old or more.

Scientists will have access to deep matter, will be able to study it in detail, conduct observations along the entire wellbore, build a real, and not supposed, continental-type section of the earth's crust, and determine the composition and physical state of matter.

About half of the way to the design 15-kilometer mark has been covered. And even this seemingly modest intermediate result turned out to be very interesting in terms of a number of important indicators.

For the first time in world science and practice, the thickness of not young sedimentary deposits, but ancient crystalline rocks, was discovered and studied in detail by a well, for the first time it was possible to collect a lot of new information about these rocks and the geological and physical conditions of their occurrence.

Rapidly creating and applying various technical innovations, continuously improving drilling technology and adapting it to specific geological conditions, Soviet scientists and drillers with domestic equipment and tools paved more than a seven-kilometer passage in the strongest earth rocks.

The path to the bowels of the Earth, in a certain sense, has become the road of technological progress in drilling: what has proven itself well in drilling wells in other areas is being tested and improved, new technical means and technology are being created and tested.

The Kola Superdeep field has become an experimental testing ground for testing new drilling equipment and technology. The role of the general designer and scientific supervisor of this unique testing ground was entrusted to our All-Union Order of the Red Banner of Labor Research Institute of Drilling Technology (VNIIBT) of the Minnefteprom.

Well to hell

The drilling of the Kola super-deep well served as a source of rumors associated with the emergence of the legend of the "road to hell".

The primary source of information (1989) was the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which, in turn, took the story from a Finnish newspaper report. Allegedly, while drilling a well, at a depth of 12 thousand meters, the microphones of scientists recorded screams and groans.

The Kola super-deep well immediately received the name - "the road to hell" - and each new drilled kilometer brought misfortune to the country. At a depth of 13,000 meters, the USSR collapsed, at a depth of 14,500 meters, scientists stumbled upon voids.

The researchers lowered the microphone into the shaft and heard strange terrifying sounds and even human screams. The sensors showed a temperature of 1100 °C. The scientists thought they had discovered hell.

In fact, acoustic well survey methods do not record the sound itself and not on a microphone, but the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations on seismic receivers.

The drilling stop depth was 12,262 meters and the temperature recorded at this depth was only 220 ° C, which does not correspond to the main “facts” of the legend.

Kola superdeep: the last fireworks

Sounds of the underground - the secrets of the deepest well (TC "Vesti")

Kola superdeep hellish deceit

There is a terrible story about how Soviet drillers drilled the earth so deep that they got to hell itself. They lowered a microphone into the well and recorded the cries of sinners. Recently, interest in such a supernatural achievement of science has flared up with renewed vigor - the recording itself has appeared. The sounds really resemble the rumble of the crowd, singing, some kind of squeaking is heard.

The story features a certain "Dmitry Azzakov", to whom everyone refers. But numerous attempts to find this man did not lead to anything. Our further investigation showed that the surname itself appeared in the press as early as 1989. We found it in the Finnish newspaper Ammenusastia (monthly for Christians in the Levasjoki area). It is possible that this is the original source. There, Dr. “Azzakov”, a Soviet geologist, stated the following: “As a communist, I do not believe in heaven and the Bible, but as a scientist, I am now forced to believe in hell. Needless to say, we were shocked to make such a discovery. But we know what we heard and what we saw. And we are absolutely sure that we drilled through the gates of hell.”

It followed from the newspaper that the drama allegedly erupted in the USSR, when geologists conducting surveys in Western Siberia reached a depth of 14.4 km. Suddenly, the drill bit began to rotate wildly, indicating that there was a void or a cave below. When the scientists raised the drill, a fanged, clawed creature with huge evil eyes emerged from the well, screeching like a wild animal, and disappeared. Frightened, most of the workers and engineers rushed to run, and the rest had to pass an equally ordeal.

“We lowered a microphone into the well, designed to record the movement of lithospheric plates,” Azzakov said further. “But instead, we heard a loud human voice that sounded like pain. At first we thought the sound was coming from the drilling equipment, but when we carefully checked it, our worst suspicions were confirmed. The screams and screams did not come from one person. It was the cries and groans of millions of people. Luckily, we recorded the terrifying sounds on tape."

And by June 1990, they had drilled up to 12,260 meters here. Now the work has been stopped, but then geologists did not hear about any hell.

In the end, it turned out that both stories were launched by the Norwegian Age Rendalin, who liked to call himself "special adviser to the Minister of Justice of Norway." When they became interested in him with might and main, it turned out that this was just a school teacher with an overdeveloped imagination.

He admitted that he invented everything to check how seriously the Christian press checks their publications. The audio recording, of course, was made by someone else in our days in order to somehow stir up interest in a long-standing fake.