"Well to Hell": how the deepest well in the world was drilled in the Soviet Union. Legendary Kola Superdeep

"Dr. Huberman, what the hell did you dig down there?"- a remark from the audience interrupted the report of the Russian scientist at the UNESCO meeting in Australia.

A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, a wave of reports swept the world about a mysterious accident at the Kola superdeep well. Allegedly, on the approach to the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like this. A few seconds after the appearance of a terrible sound, an explosion thundered ...

Space under your feet

In the late 70s and early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep, as the residents of the city of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk region call the well, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. From hundreds of applicants, one or two were selected. Together with the order for employment, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of a Moscow professor. There were 16 research laboratories working at the well at the same time, each the size of an average plant. Only the Germans dug the earth with such persistence, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.

Distant galaxies have been studied by mankind much better than what is under the earth's crust a few kilometers from us. The Kola Superdeep is a kind of telescope into the mysterious inner world of the planet.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, it 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 40 years ago, they were sure that the layer of granites starts at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then basalts come. It was expected to meet the mantle at a depth of 15-18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out to be completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep proved that this is not so.

Baltic Shield

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in those places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks go under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of about 5 kilometers under a 4-kilometer water column.

Alas, not a single ocean drilling rig has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers. In general, almost all ultra-deep well projects mysteriously ended at a depth of 3 km. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the Boers: either they fell into unexpected super-hot areas, or they seemed to be bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Deeper than 3 kilometers, only 5 wells broke through, 4 of them were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the mark of 7 kilometers.

Initial 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 drilling would take incomparably longer, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates in prehistoric times that the most significant movements of terrestrial rocks took place.

The drilling point was chosen on the Kola Peninsula not by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind. A multi-kilometer section of the Baltic Shield layers is a clear history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.

Conqueror of the Deep

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig is capable of disappointing the layman. The well does not look like a mine that our imagination draws for us. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. An imaginary section of the Kola super-deep well looks like a thin needle that has pierced the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of the needle, is raised and lowered over several days. Faster is impossible: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the 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.

Tricone chisel.

12,000 meters of discovery and some hell

“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 Huberman. 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 Guberman. 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 700 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 1200 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was roasting more than 2200 degrees - 1000 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.

We were taught at school: there are young rocks, granites, basalts, a mantle and a core. But the granites turned out to be 3 kilometers lower than expected. Next were the basalts. They weren't found at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer. This is an extremely important discovery, because all our ideas about the origin and distribution of minerals are connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth.

Eruptive breccia of basalts from a depth of 2977.8 m
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.

Demons

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. The journalists of a Finnish newspaper broke through to the inhabitants of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.

“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.

"Voices from Hell" is an audio fragment that exists on the Internet, containing a recording of sounds resembling human voices, screams, groans. It is alleged that the recording was made deep underground, while drilling an ultra-deep well.
I am not a very naive person. It is extremely clear that with the help of a computer you can bungle anything.

But... If we assume that some work at depth was indeed carried out, why not imagine that audio recordings could also be carried out? That's quite possible. So something really could have leaked to the Internet. I listened to the recording again and, to be honest, I felt terrible - if there, in unknown worlds at a monstrous depth, you really hear such a thing - no matter what it is - then this is at least a reason to think ...

I decided, as far as possible, to find out the history of this passage. And it turned out to be not so difficult. The traces led to an old, well-known horror story back in Soviet times about how scientists, while drilling an ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula, "got to hell." The original source of this information was also found - a publication in a certain Finnish newspaper Ammenusastii. In particular, it was there that the name of the Soviet scientist, “Dr. Dmitry Azzakov”, was mentioned, who told the newspaper the following: “We lowered a microphone into the well, designed to record the movement of lithospheric plates. 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."

So, it was not difficult to find the source of the appearance of the record. It turned out to be much more difficult to find Dr. Azzakov himself. However, no mention of this person was found anywhere else. All search queries on the Internet produced links only to the article mentioned above.
Then I decided to use the databases on the inhabitants of the largest cities of Russia - but not only the doctor mentioned, but in general people with a similar surname were not found. There is no Dr. Azzakov, which means that the record allegedly made by him is a fake! ..
Moreover, something else interesting was found on the Internet regarding this whole story with deep drilling.
It turns out that there was a second version of this story - this time the Norwegian newspaper Asker og Baerums Budstikke told about it. The case allegedly took place in Siberia, where it was not the mythical Russian Azzakov who worked at one of the super-deep mines, but a no less virtual Norwegian - "chief seismologist Bjarni Nummedal." And it was he who made the record. (And also contemplated some monstrous creature that escaped from the dungeon and with difficulty was driven back).

Of course, there are no super-deep mines in Siberia, but this is not important, but the important thing is that by seizing on a Norwegian virtual seismologist, the journalists of one of the Moscow publications were able to find the very real author of this whole hellish story. It turned out to be someone Age Rendalin, a Norwegian who, apparently, got bored with the routine work of a teacher in a provincial town, and he began to call himself "special adviser to justice in Norway." The special adviser also turned out to be a great inventor. When he had a heart-to-heart talk with him, he gladly admitted that it was he who launched the hell duck into the press in order to test how easy it was to fool the Scandinavian journalists. It turned out to be easy to carry out, and not only them.
So, everything seems to be very clear. The whole story is fiction, the record is a fake.

And here I ask everyone to collect their thoughts and read the following very carefully.
According to the official website of the Kola drilling rig (http://superdeep.pechenga.ru/), in 2005-2006, seismoacoustic recordings were carried out at the well, but after (according to the website, due to lack of funding) they were stopped. These are no longer mythical Norwegian seismologists and non-existent Russian doctors. The information is quite official and there are no doubts about its reliability. Even the equipment on which the recording was made is known - this is a VESNA-type tape recorder, MK-60 cassettes (by the way, the fact that there was no newer equipment at the drilling site once again speaks in favor of the reliability of this information.)
So, we found out the most important thing - records at a depth of many kilometers were indeed made. Moreover, they were conducted relatively recently (and it was then that the fragment appeared on the Internet). And further. If someone in the distant past dealt with Soviet audio cassettes, then he probably remembers their characteristic noise that appears after several listening or re-recording. I heard this noise on the recording under study.

Author: Yuri Granovsky
Based on materials from sites: superdeep.pechenga.ru, popmech.ru

In the 50-70s of the last century, the world was changing at an incredible speed. Things have appeared, without which it is difficult to imagine today's world: the Internet, a computer, cellular communications, the conquest of space and the depths of the sea appeared. Man was rapidly expanding the spheres of his presence in the Universe, but he still had rather rough ideas about the structure of his "home" - the planet Earth. Although even then the idea of ultra-deep drilling was not new: back in 1958, the Americans launched the Mohole project. Its name is derived from two words:

Moho- a surface named after Andriy Mohorovichich, a Croatian geophysicist and seismologist, who in 1909 identified the lower boundary of the earth's crust, on which an abrupt increase in the speed of seismic waves occurs;
hole- well, hole, orifice. Based on the assumption that the thickness of the earth's crust under the oceans is much less than on land, 5 wells were drilled near the island of Guadelupe with a depth of about 180 meters (with an ocean depth of up to 3.5 km). In five years, the researchers drilled five wells, collected many samples from the basalt layer, but did not reach the mantle. As a result, the project was declared a failure and the work was curtailed.

Candidate of Technical Sciences A. OSADCHI

Hundreds of thousands of wells have been drilled in the earth's crust over the last decades of the last century. And this is not surprising, because the search and extraction of minerals in our time is inevitably associated with deep drilling. But among all these wells there is only one on the planet - the legendary Kola Superdeep (SG), the depth of which is still unsurpassed - more than twelve kilometers. In addition, the SG is one of the few that was drilled not for the sake of exploration or mining, but for purely scientific purposes: to study the most ancient rocks of our planet and learn the secrets of the processes going on in them.

Geologists V. Lanev (left) and Yu. Smirnov examine core samples.

Drill bits. Exactly the same, but exactly the one that was used when drilling at a depth of 12 km, became an exhibit at the International Geological Congress in 1984.

On this hook, a string of pipes was lowered and raised. On the left - in a basket - there are 33-meter pipes prepared for descent - "candles".

Kola superdeep well.

Individual core samples.

A unique core storage, where the cores of the entire twelve-kilometer well are laid out in a strict order, numbered, on the shelves in boxes.

Such badges were proudly worn by everyone who worked for the SG.

Today, no drilling is carried out at the Kola Superdeep, it was stopped in 1992. SG was not the first and not the only one in the program of studying the deep structure of the Earth. Of the foreign wells, three reached depths of 9.1 to 9.6 km. It was planned that one of them (in Germany) would surpass the Kola. However, drilling on all three, as well as on the SG, was stopped due to accidents and for technical reasons cannot be continued yet.

It can be seen that it is not in vain that the tasks of drilling ultra-deep wells are compared in complexity with a flight into space, with a long-term space expedition to another planet. Rock samples extracted from the earth's interior are no less interesting than samples of lunar soil. The soil delivered by the Soviet lunar rover was studied at various institutes, including the Kola Science Center. It turned out that the composition of the lunar soil almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about 3 km.

SITE SELECTION AND FORECAST

A special exploration expedition (Kola GRE) was created to drill the SG. The place of drilling was also, of course, not chosen by chance - the Baltic Shield in the area of the Kola Peninsula. Here, the oldest igneous rocks with an age of about 3 billion years come to the surface (and the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old). It was interesting to drill in the most ancient igneous rocks, because the sedimentary rocks to a depth of 8 km have already been well studied in oil production. And in igneous rocks during mining, they usually get only 1-2 km. The choice of a place for the SG was also facilitated by the fact that the Pecheneg trough is located here - a huge bowl-like structure, as if pressed into ancient rocks. Its origin is associated with a deep fault. And it is here that large copper-nickel deposits are located. And the tasks assigned to the Kola geological expedition included identifying a number of features of geological processes and phenomena, including ore formation, determining the nature of the boundaries separating layers in the continental crust, and collecting data on the material composition and physical state of rocks.

Prior to drilling, a section of the earth's crust was built on the basis of seismological data. It served as a forecast for the appearance of those earth layers that the well crossed. It was assumed that a granite sequence extends to a depth of 5 km, after which stronger and more ancient basalt rocks were expected.

So, the north-west of the Kola Peninsula, 10 km from the city of Zapolyarny, not far from our border with Norway, was chosen as the drilling site. Zapolyarny is a small town that grew up in the fifties next to a nickel plant. Among the hilly tundra on a hillock blown by all the winds and snowstorms, there is a "square", each side of which is formed from seven five-story houses. Inside there are two streets, at their intersection there is a square where the House of Culture and the hotel stand. A kilometer from the town, behind the ravine, the buildings and tall chimneys of the nickel plant are visible, behind it, along the mountain slope, waste rock dumps from the nearest quarry darken. Near the town there is a highway to the city of Nikel and to a small lake, on the other side of which is already Norway.

The land of those places in abundance keeps traces of the past war. When you travel by bus from Murmansk to Zapolyarny, about half way you cross the small river Zapadnaya Litsa, on its bank there is a memorial obelisk. This is the only place in all of Russia where the front stood motionless during the war from 1941 to 1944, resting against the Barents Sea. Although there were fierce battles all the time and the losses on both sides were huge. The Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through to Murmansk, the only ice-free port in our North. In the winter of 1944, Soviet troops managed to break through the front.

From Zapolyarny to Superdeep - 10 km. The road goes past the plant, then along the edge of the quarry and then climbs uphill. A small basin opens from the pass, in which a drilling rig is installed. Its height is from a twenty-story building. "Shift workers" came here from Zapolyarny to each shift. In total, about 3,000 people worked on the expedition, they lived in the city in two houses. The grumbling of some mechanisms was heard around the clock from the drilling rig. Silence meant that for some reason there was a break in drilling. In winter, during the long polar night - and it lasts there from November 23 to January 23 - the entire drilling rig was lit up with lights. Often, the light of the aurora was added to them.

A little about the staff. A good, highly qualified team of workers gathered in the Kola geological exploration expedition, created for drilling. D. Huberman was almost always the head of the GRE, a talented leader who selected the team. Chief engineer I. Vasilchenko was responsible for drilling. The rig was commanded by A. Batishchev, whom everyone called simply Lekha. V. Laney was in charge of geology, and Yu. Kuznetsov was in charge of geophysics. Huge work on core processing and creation of the core storage was carried out by geologist Yu. Smirnov - the one who had the "cherished locker", which we will tell about later. More than 10 research institutes took part in the research on the SG. The team also had its own "kulibins" and "left-handers" (S. Tserikovsky was especially distinguished), who invented and manufactured various devices, sometimes allowing them to get out of the most difficult, seemingly hopeless situations. They themselves created many of the necessary mechanisms here in well-equipped workshops.

DRILLING HISTORY

Drilling of the well began in 1970. Sinking to a depth of 7263 m took 4 years. It was driven by a serial installation, which is usually used in the extraction of oil and gas. Because of the constant winds and cold, the entire tower had to be sheathed to the top with wooden shields. Otherwise, it is simply impossible for someone who must stand at the top during the lifting of the pipe string to work.

Then there was a one-year break associated with the construction of a new derrick and the installation of a specially designed drilling rig - "Uralmash-15000". It was with her help that all further ultra-deep drilling was carried out. The new installation has more powerful automated equipment. Turbine drilling was used - this is when not the entire string rotates, but only the drill head. Drilling fluid was fed through the column under pressure, which rotated the multi-stage turbine below. Its total length is 46 m. The turbine ends with a drilling head with a diameter of 214 mm (it is often called a crown), which has an annular shape, so an undrilled column of rock remains in the middle - a core with a diameter of 60 mm. A pipe passes through all sections of the turbine - a core receiver, where columns of mined rock are collected. The crushed rock, together with the drilling fluid, is carried along the well to the surface.

The mass of the string immersed in the well with drilling fluid is about 200 tons. This despite the fact that specially designed pipes made of light alloys were used. If the column is made of ordinary steel pipes, it will break from its own weight.

There are many difficulties, sometimes completely unexpected, in the process of drilling at great depths and with the selection of cores.

Penetration in one trip, determined by the wear of the drill head, is usually 7-10 m. (A trip, or a cycle, is the descent of a string with a turbine and a drilling tool, the actual drilling and a complete rise of the string.) The drilling itself takes 4 hours. And the descent and ascent of the 12-kilometer column takes 18 hours. When lifting, the string is automatically disassembled into sections (candles) 33 m long. On average, 60 m were drilled per month. 50 km of pipes were used to drill the last 5 km of the well. That's how worn they are.

Up to a depth of approximately 7 km, the well crossed strong, relatively homogeneous rocks, and therefore the wellbore was flat, almost corresponding to the diameter of the drill head. Work progressed, one might say, calmly. However, at a depth of 7 km, less strong fractured, interbedded with small very hard interlayers of rocks - gneisses, amphibolites - went. Drilling has become more difficult. The trunk took an oval shape, many cavities appeared. Accidents have become more frequent.

The figure shows the initial forecast of the geological section and the one made on the basis of drilling data. It is interesting to note (column B) that the formation inclination along the well is about 50 degrees. Thus, it is clear that the rocks intersected by the well come to the surface. It is here that one can recall the already mentioned "cherished locker" of the geologist Y. Smirnov. There, on one side, he had samples obtained from the well, and on the other, taken on the surface at that distance from the drilling rig, where the corresponding layer goes up. The coincidence of breeds is almost complete.

The year 1983 was marked by a hitherto unsurpassed record: the drilling depth exceeded 12 km. Work has been suspended.

The International Geological Congress was approaching, which, according to the plan, was held in Moscow. The Geoexpo exhibition was being prepared for it. It was decided not only to read the reports on the results achieved at the SG, but also to show the congress participants the work in kind and the extracted rock samples. The monograph "Kola Superdeep" was published for the congress.

At the Geoexpo exhibition, there was a large stand dedicated to the work of the SG and the most important thing - achieving a record depth. There were impressive graphs telling about the technique and technology of drilling, mined rock samples, photographs of equipment and the team at work. But the greatest attention of the participants and guests of the congress was attracted by one non-traditional detail for an exhibition show: the most common and already slightly rusted drill head with worn carbide teeth. The label said that it was she who was used when drilling at a depth of more than 12 km. This drill head amazed even specialists. Probably, everyone involuntarily expected to see some kind of miracle of technology, maybe with diamond equipment ... And they still did not know that a large pile of exactly the same already rusted drill heads was assembled on the SG next to the drilling rig: after all, they had to be replaced with new ones for about every 7-8 meters drilled.

Many congress delegates wanted to see with their own eyes the unique drilling rig on the Kola Peninsula and make sure that a record drilling depth had indeed been achieved in the Union. Such a departure took place. There, a meeting of the congress section was held on the spot. The delegates were shown the drilling rig, while they were lifting a string from the well, disconnecting 33-meter sections from it. Photos and articles about the SG were published in newspapers and magazines in almost all countries of the world. A postage stamp was issued, special cancellation of envelopes was organized. I will not list the names of the winners of various awards and those awarded for their work ...

But the holidays were over, we had to continue drilling. And it began with the largest accident on the very first flight on September 27, 1984 - a "black date" in the history of the SG. The well does not forgive when it is left unattended for a long time. During the time until drilling was carried out, changes inevitably occurred in its walls, those that were not fixed with a cemented steel pipe.

At first everything went smoothly. The drillers carried out their usual operations: one by one, the sections of the drill string were lowered, the drilling fluid supply pipe was connected to the last, upper one, and the pumps were turned on. We started drilling. The instruments on the console in front of the operator showed the normal mode of operation (the number of revolutions of the drill head, its pressure on the rock, the fluid flow rate for the rotation of the turbine, etc.).

Having drilled another 9-meter segment at a depth of more than 12 km, which took 4 hours, they reached a depth of 12.066 km. Prepare for the rise of the column. We tried. Doesn't go. At such depths, "sticking" has been observed more than once. This is when some section of the column seems to stick to the walls (maybe something crumbled from above, and it jammed a little). To move the column from its place, a force exceeding its weight (about 200 tons) is required. So did this time, but the column did not move. We added a little effort, and the arrow of the device sharply slowed down the readings. The column became much lighter, there could not have been such a weight loss during the normal course of the operation. We began to rise: one by one, the sections were unscrewed one after the other. During the last ascent, a shortened piece of pipe with an uneven bottom edge hung on a hook. This meant that not only the turbodrill, but also 5 km of drill pipes remained in the well...

Seven months trying to get them. After all, we lost not just 5 km of pipes, but the results of five years of work.

Then all attempts to return the lost were stopped and they began to drill again from a depth of 7 km. I must say that it is after the seventh kilometer that the geological conditions here are especially difficult for work. The drilling technology of each step is worked out by trial and error. And starting from a depth of about 10 km - even more difficult. Drilling, operation of equipment and equipment are at the limit.

Therefore, accidents here have to be expected at any moment. They are preparing for them. Methods and means of their elimination are thought over in advance. A typical complex accident is a breakage of the drilling assembly along with part of the drill string. The main method of eliminating it is to create a ledge just above the lost part and from this place to drill a new bypass hole. A total of 12 such bypass holes were drilled in the well. Four of them are from 2200 to 5000 m long. The main cost of such accidents is years of lost labor.

Only in the everyday view, a well is a vertical "hole" from the surface of the earth to the bottom. In reality, this is far from the case. Especially if the well is ultra-deep and crosses inclined seams of various densities. Then it seems to meander, because the drill constantly deviates towards less durable rocks. After each measurement, showing that the inclination of the well exceeds the allowable one, it must be tried to "return to its place". To do this, together with the drilling tool, special "deflectors" are lowered, which help to reduce the angle of inclination of the well during drilling. Accidents often occur with the loss of drilling tools and parts of pipes. After that, a new trunk has to be done, as we have already said, stepping aside. So imagine what a well looks like in the ground: something like the roots of a giant plant branched at a depth.

This is the reason for the special duration of the last phase of drilling.

After the largest accident - the "black date" of 1984 - they again approached a depth of 12 km only after 6 years. In 1990, a maximum was reached - 12,262 km. After a few more accidents, we were convinced that we couldn’t get deeper. All the possibilities of modern technology have been exhausted. It seemed as if the Earth no longer wanted to reveal its secrets. Drilling was stopped in 1992.

RESEARCH. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

One of the very important goals of drilling was to obtain a core column of rock samples along the entire length of the borehole. And this task has been completed. The longest core in the world was marked out like a ruler in meters and placed in the appropriate order in boxes. The box number and sample numbers are indicated at the top. There are almost 900 such boxes in stock.

Now it remains only to study the core, which is really indispensable in determining the structure of the rock, its composition, properties, and age.

But a rock sample raised to the surface has different properties than in the massif. Here, at the top, he is freed from the enormous mechanical stresses that exist at depth. During drilling, it cracked and became saturated with drilling mud. Even if deep conditions are recreated in a special chamber, the parameters measured on the sample still differ from those in the array. And one more small "hack": for every 100 m of a drilled well, 100 m of core are not obtained. On the SG from depths of more than 5 km, the average core recovery was only about 30%, and from depths of more than 9 km, these were sometimes only individual plaques 2-3 cm thick, corresponding to the most durable interlayers.

So, the core taken from the well on the SG does not provide complete information about deep rocks.

The wells were drilled for scientific purposes, so the whole range of modern research methods was used. In addition to extracting the core, studies of the properties of rocks in their natural occurrence were necessarily carried out. The technical condition of the well was constantly monitored. The temperature was measured throughout the wellbore, natural radioactivity - gamma radiation, induced radioactivity after pulsed neutron irradiation, electrical and magnetic properties of rocks, elastic wave propagation velocity, and the composition of gases in the well fluid.

To a depth of 7 km, serial instruments were used. Work at greater depths and at higher temperatures required the creation of special heat and pressure resistant instruments. Particular difficulties arose during the last stage of drilling; when the temperature in the well approached 200 ° C, and the pressure exceeded 1000 atmospheres, serial devices could no longer work. The geophysical design bureaus and specialized laboratories of several research institutes came to the rescue, producing single copies of thermal pressure-resistant instruments. Thus, all the time they worked only on domestic equipment.

In a word, the well was investigated in sufficient detail to its entire depth. The studies were carried out in stages, approximately once a year, after deepening the well by 1 km. Each time after that, the reliability of the received materials was assessed. Appropriate calculations made it possible to determine the parameters of a particular breed. We discovered a certain alternation of layers and already knew what rocks the caverns are confined to and the partial loss of information associated with them. We learned to identify rocks literally by "crumbs" and on this basis to recreate a complete picture of what the well "hidden". In short, we managed to build a detailed lithological column - to show the alternation of rocks and their properties.

FROM OWN EXPERIENCE

Approximately once a year, when the next stage of drilling was completed - deepening the well by 1 km, I also went to the SG to take the measurements that I was entrusted with. The well at this time was usually washed out and provided for research for a month. The time of the planned stop was always known in advance. The telegram-call for work also came in advance. The equipment has been checked and packaged. The formalities related to closed work in the border zone have been completed. Finally everything is settled. Let's go.

Our group is a small friendly team: a downhole tool developer, a developer of new ground equipment, and I am a methodologist. We arrive 10 days before measurements. We get acquainted with the data on the technical condition of the well. We draw up and approve a detailed measurement program. We assemble and calibrate equipment. We are waiting for a call - a call from the well. Our turn to "dive" is the third, but if there is a refusal from the predecessors, the well will be provided to us. This time they are all right, they say that tomorrow morning they will finish. With us in the same team of geophysicists - operators who register the signals received from the equipment in the well and command all operations for lowering and raising the downhole tool, as well as mechanics on the lift, they control the winding from the drum and winding on it those same 12 km of cable on which the tool is lowered into the well. Drillers are also on duty.

Work has begun. The device is lowered into the well for several meters. Last check. Go. The descent is slow - about 1 km / h, with continuous monitoring of the signal coming from below. So far so good. But at the eighth kilometer, the signal twitched and disappeared. So something is wrong. Full lift. (Just in case, we have prepared a second set of equipment.) We begin checking all the details. This time the cable was faulty. He is being replaced. This takes more than a day. The new descent took 10 hours. Finally, the observer of the signal said: "Arrived at the eleventh kilometer." Command to operators: "Start recording". What and how is pre-scheduled according to the program. Now you need to lower and raise the downhole tool several times in a given interval in order to take measurements. This time the equipment worked fine. Now full lift. We climbed up to 3 km, and suddenly the call of the winch (he is our man with humor): "The rope is over." How?! What?! Alas, the cable broke... The downhole tool and 8 km of cable were left lying at the bottom... Fortunately, a day later, the drillers managed to pick it all up, using the methodology and devices developed by local craftsmen to eliminate such emergencies.

RESULTS

The tasks set in the ultra-deep drilling project have been fulfilled. Special equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling, as well as for the study of wells drilled to a great depth, have been developed and created. We received information, one might say, "first-hand" about the physical state, properties and composition of rocks in their natural occurrence and from the core to a depth of 12,262 m.

The well gave out an excellent gift to the motherland at a shallow depth - in the range of 1.6-1.8 km. Industrial copper-nickel ores were discovered there - a new ore horizon was discovered. And very handy, because the local nickel plant is already running out of ore.

As noted above, the geological forecast of the well section did not come true (see the figure on page 39.). The picture that was expected during the first 5 km in the well stretched for 7 km, and then completely unexpected rocks appeared. The basalts predicted at a depth of 7 km were not found, even when they dropped to 12 km.

It was expected that the boundary that gives the most reflection in seismic sounding is the level where the granites pass into a more durable basalt layer. In reality, it turned out that less durable and less dense fractured rocks - Archean gneisses - are located there. This was not expected at all. And this is a fundamentally new geological and geophysical information that allows you to interpret the data of deep geophysical surveys in a different way.

The data on the process of ore formation in the deep layers of the earth's crust also turned out to be unexpected and fundamentally new. So, at depths of 9-12 km, highly porous fractured rocks saturated with underground highly mineralized waters were encountered. These waters are one of the sources of ore formation. Previously, it was believed that this was possible only at much shallower depths. It was in this interval that an increased gold content was found in the core - up to 1 g per 1 ton of rock (a concentration that is considered suitable for industrial development). But will it ever be profitable to mine gold from such a depth?

The ideas about the thermal regime of the earth's interior, about the deep distribution of temperatures in the areas of basalt shields, have also changed. At a depth of more than 6 km, a temperature gradient of 20 ° C per 1 km was obtained instead of the expected (as in the upper part) 16 ° C per 1 km. It was revealed that half of the heat flux is of radiogenic origin.

Having drilled the unique Kola super-deep well, we learned a lot and at the same time realized how little we still know about the structure of our planet.

Candidate of Technical Sciences A. OSADCHI.

LITERATURE

Kola superdeep. Moscow: Nedra, 1984.

Kola superdeep. Scientific results and research experiences. M., 1998.

Kozlovsky E. A. World Forum of Geologists."Science and Life" No. 10, 1984.

Kozlovsky E. A. Kola superdeep."Science and Life" No. 11, 1985.

Penetrating into those secrets that are under our feet is no easier than learning all the secrets of the Universe above our heads. And perhaps even more difficult, because in order to look into the depths of the Earth, a very deep well is needed.

The goals of drilling are different (oil production, for example), but ultra-deep (more than 6 km) wells are primarily needed by scientists who want to know what is interesting inside our planet. Where are such "windows" to the center of the Earth and what is the name of the deepest drilled well, we will tell you in this article. First, just one explanation.

Drilling can be done both vertically downwards and at an angle to the earth's surface. In the second case, the extent can be very large, but the depth, if measured from the mouth (the beginning of the well on the surface) to the deepest point in the bowels, is less than those that run perpendicular.

An example is one of the wells of the Chayvinskoye field, the length of which has reached 12,700 m, but in depth it is significantly inferior to the deepest wells.

This well with a depth of 7520 m is located on the territory of modern Western Ukraine. However, work on it was carried out back in the USSR in 1975-1982.

The purpose of creating this one of the deepest wells in the USSR was the extraction of minerals (oil and gas), but the study of the bowels of the earth was also an important task.

9 En-Yakhinskaya well

Not far from the city of Novy Urengoy in the Yamalo-Nenets district. The purpose of drilling the Earth was to determine the composition of the earth's crust at the drilling site and to determine the profitability of developing large depths for mining.

As is usually the case with ultra-deep wells, the subsoil presented the researchers with many "surprises". For example, at a depth of about 4 km, the temperature reached +125 (higher than the calculated one), and after another 3 km, the temperature was already +210 degrees. Nevertheless, scientists completed their research, and in 2006 the well was liquidated.

8 Saatli in Azerbaijan

In the USSR, one of the deepest wells in the world, Saatli, was drilled on the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It was planned to bring its depth to 11 km and conduct various studies related to both the structure of the earth's crust and the development of oil at different depths.

Interested in

However, it was not possible to drill such a deep well, as it happens very, very often. During operation, machines often fail due to extremely high temperatures and pressures; the well is curved, since the hardness of different rocks is not uniform; often a minor breakdown entails such problems that their solution requires more funds than the creation of a new one.

So in this case, despite the fact that the materials obtained as a result of drilling were very valuable, the work had to be stopped at around 8324 m.

7 Zisterdorf - the deepest in Austria

Another deep well was drilled in Austria, near the town of Zisterdorf. Nearby were gas and oil fields, and geologists hoped that an ultra-deep well would make it possible to make super-profits in the field of mining.

Indeed, natural gas was discovered at a very considerable depth - to the despair of specialists, it was impossible to extract it. Further drilling ended in an accident, the walls of the well collapsed.
It did not make sense to restore, they decided to drill another nearby, but nothing interesting for the industrialists could be found in it.

6 Universities in the USA

One of the deepest wells on Earth is the University in the USA. Its depth is 8686 m. The materials obtained as a result of drilling are of considerable interest, as they provide new material about the structure of the planet on which we live.

Surprisingly, as a result, it turned out that it was not scientists who were right, but science fiction writers: there are layers of minerals in the bowels, and life exists at great depths - however, we are talking about bacteria!

In the 1990s, drilling of the ultra-deep well Hauptborung began in Germany. It was planned to bring its depth to 12 km, but, as is usually the case with ultra-deep mines, the plans were not given success. Already at around 7 meters, problems began with the machines: drilling vertically down became impossible, the mine began to deviate more and more to the side. Each meter was given with difficulty, and the temperature grew extremely.

Finally, when the heat reached 270 degrees, and endless accidents and failures exhausted everyone, it was decided to suspend work. This happened at a depth of 9.1 km, which makes the Hauptborung well one of the deepest.

The scientific material obtained from the drilling has become the basis for thousands of studies, and the mine itself is currently used for tourism purposes.

4 Baden Unit

In the US, Lone Star attempted to drill an ultra-deep well in 1970. The location near the city of Anadarko in Oklahoma was not chosen by chance: here, wildlife and high scientific potential create a convenient opportunity for both drilling a well and studying it.

The work was carried out for more than a year, and during this time they drilled to a depth of 9159 m, which makes it possible to include it among the deepest mines in the world.

And finally, we present the three deepest wells in the world. In third place is Bertha Rogers - the world's first ultra-deep well, which, however, did not remain the deepest for long. After only a short time, the deepest well in the USSR, the Kola, appeared.

Bert Rogers was drilled by GHK, a mining company, mainly natural gas. The aim of the work was to search for gas at great depths. Work began in 1970, when very little was known about the earth's interior.

The company had high hopes for a place in Washita County, because there are many minerals in Oklahoma, and at that time scientists thought that there were entire layers of oil and gas in the thickness of the earth. However, 500 days of work and huge funds invested in the project turned out to be useless: the drill melted in a layer of liquid sulfur, and gas or oil could not be found.

In addition, scientific research was not carried out during the drilling, since the well was only of commercial importance.

2 KTB-Oberpfalz

In second place in our ranking is the German well Oberpfalz, which has reached a depth of almost 10 km.

This mine holds the record as the deepest vertical well, since it goes to a depth of 7500 m without deviation to the side! This is an unprecedented figure, because the mines at great depths inevitably bend, but the unique equipment used by scientists from Germany made it possible to move the drill vertically down for a very long time.

Not so big and the difference in diameter. Ultra-deep wells begin on the surface of the earth with a hole of a rather large diameter (at Oberpfalz - 71 cm), and then gradually narrow. At the bottom, the German well has a diameter of only about 16 cm.

The reason why the work had to be stopped is the same as in all other cases - equipment failure due to high temperatures.

1 Kola well - the deepest in the world

We owe a stupid legend to the “duck” launched in the Western press, where, with reference to the mythical “scientist of world renown” Azzakov, it was told about a “creature” that escaped from a mine, the temperature in which reached 1000 degrees, about the groans of millions of people who signed up for microphone down and so on.

At first glance, it is clear that the story is sewn with white thread (and it was published, by the way, on April Fool's Day): the temperature in the mine was no higher than 220 degrees, however, with it, as well as at 1000 degrees, no microphone can work ; creatures did not break out, and the named scientist does not exist.

The Kola well is the deepest in the world. Its depth reaches 12262 m, which significantly exceeds the depth of other mines. But not length! At least three wells can now be named - Qatar, Sakhalin-1 and one of the wells of the Chayvo field (Z-42) - which are longer, but not deeper.
Kolskaya gave scientists colossal material, which has not yet been fully processed and comprehended.

A place	Name	The country	Depth
1	Kola	the USSR	12262
2	KTB-Oberpfalz	Germany	9900
3	USA	9583
4	baden unit	USA	9159
5	Germany	9100
6	USA	8686
7	Zisterdorf	Austria	8553
8	USSR (modern Azerbaijan)	8324
9	Russia	8250
10	Shevchenkovskaya	USSR (Ukraine)	7520

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 Bert-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.

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 “excessive” 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.

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.

“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, as an honest scientist, I 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.

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