Drilling the Kola well. Research work. goals and methods. Kola Superdeep: the last fireworks

"Dr. Huberman, what the hell did you dig up down there?" - a remark from the audience interrupted the report of a Russian scientist at a UNESCO meeting in Australia. A couple of weeks earlier, in April 1995, a wave of reports about a mysterious accident at the Kola superdeep well swept across the world.

Allegedly, on approaching the 13th kilometer, the instruments recorded a strange noise coming from the bowels of the planet - the yellow newspapers unanimously assured that only the cries of sinners from the underworld could sound like that. A few seconds after the terrible sound appeared, an explosion occurred...

Space under your feet

In the late 70s - early 80s, getting a job at the Kola Superdeep Well, as residents of the village of Zapolyarny in the Murmansk Region affectionately call the well, was more difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Out of hundreds of applicants, one or two were chosen. Along with the employment order, the lucky ones received a separate apartment and a salary equal to double or triple the salary of Moscow professors. There were 16 research laboratories operating at the well simultaneously, each the size of an average factory. Only the Germans dug the earth with such tenacity, but, as the Guinness Book of Records testifies, the deepest German well is almost half as long as ours.

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

Since the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that the Earth consists of a crust, mantle and core. At the same time, no one could really say where one layer ends and the next begins. Scientists did not even know what these layers actually consist of. Some 40 years ago they were sure that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to 3 kilometers, and then there are basalts. The mantle was expected to be encountered at a depth of 15–18 kilometers. In reality, everything turned out completely different. And although school textbooks still write that the Earth consists of three layers, scientists from the Kola Superdeep Site have proven that this is not so.

Baltic shield

Projects for traveling deep into the Earth appeared in the early 60s in several countries at once. They tried to drill wells in places where the crust should have been thinner - the goal was to reach the mantle. For example, the Americans drilled in the area of ​​the island of Maui, Hawaii, where, according to seismic studies, ancient rocks emerge under the ocean floor and the mantle is located at a depth of approximately 5 kilometers under a four-kilometer layer of water. Alas, not a single ocean drilling site has penetrated deeper than 3 kilometers.

In general, almost all projects of ultra-deep wells mysteriously ended at a depth of three kilometers. It was at this moment that something strange began to happen to the drills: either they found themselves in unexpected super-hot areas, or as if they were being bitten off by some unprecedented monster. Only 5 wells broke through deeper than 3 kilometers, 4 of which were Soviet. And only the Kola Superdeep was destined to overcome the 7-kilometer mark.

Initial domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology that it was necessary to create a well on the continent. Although it would take much longer to drill, he believed, the well would be much more valuable from a scientific point of view, because it was in the thickness of the continental plates that the most significant movements of earth rocks took place in prehistoric times. The drilling point was not chosen on the Kola Peninsula by chance. The peninsula is located on the so-called Baltic Shield, which is composed of the most ancient rocks known to mankind.

A multi-kilometer section of the layers of the Baltic Shield is a visual history of the planet over the past 3 billion years.

Conqueror of the Depths

The appearance of the Kola drilling rig can disappoint the average person. The well is not like the mine that our imagination pictures. There are no descents underground, only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters goes into the thickness. The imaginary section of the Kola superdeep well looks like a tiny needle piercing the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors, located at the end of a needle, is raised and lowered over several days. You can’t go faster: the strongest composite cable can break under its own weight.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the underground can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below really look like screams and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that plagued the Kola Superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers. Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures at which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. One day, it was as if the cable had been pulled from below and was torn off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remains of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents still remains a mystery. However, they were not the reason for stopping drilling in the Baltic Shield.

12,226 meters of discoveries and a little devilry

“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” - David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,226 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Huberman. Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers.

Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle. But already at 5 kilometers the ambient temperature exceeded 70 ºC, at seven - over 120 ºC, and at a depth of 12 it was hotter than 220 ºC - 100 ºC higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters.

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

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

Demons

There were almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers at the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for where exactly.

The history of the Kola Superdeep is not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not, it was in 1995 that a powerful explosion of unknown origin was heard in the depths of the mine. Journalists from a Finnish newspaper broke through to the residents of Zapolyarny - and the world was shocked by the story of a demon flying out of the bowels of the planet.

“When UNESCO began to ask me about this mysterious story, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened to us. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing like that was found at the same depth,” recalls academician David Guberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine belt, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.

You know that people have been unraveling the mysteries of the planet for centuries? They tried to find answers under their feet. TravelAsk will tell you about the largest wells in the world.

What history says

They tried to descend to the depths of the Earth many times. The Chinese were among the first. In the 13th century, they dug a well 1200 meters deep.

In 1930, Europeans broke this record: they drilled into the earth's surface to a depth of three kilometers.

Time passed, and this figure kept growing. So, at the end of the 1950s, the wells already reached 7 kilometers.

The deepest well in the world

In fact, most wells are made during mining. Today the record belongs to the well of the Chayvinskoye field Z-42. It was built in a very short time: just over 70 days. It belongs to the Sakhalin-1 project and is an oil project.

Its depth is 12,700 meters. Just imagine, the highest mountain on Earth is Everest. It goes almost 9 kilometers into the sky. And the deepest trench is the Mariana Trench. It is about 11 kilometers. That is, well Z-42 surpassed all indicators of Mother Nature.

Well in the Murmansk region

But we want to tell you in more detail about one special well. It is located in the Murmansk region, about 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny. It is called the Kola superdeep well. Its depth is 12,262 meters. It is interesting because it was originally created not for mining, but for studying the lithosphere.

The diameter of the well at the surface of the earth is 92 centimeters, and the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 centimeters.

The temperature during drilling at a depth of 5 kilometers was 70 degrees, at a depth of 7 kilometers - 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 kilometers - 220 degrees.

The Kola superdeep well was laid in 1970 on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. The main goal was to study volcanic rocks, which are rarely drilled for mining. More than 15 research laboratories operated here.

They curtailed their activities in 1990, as many accidents occurred here: drill strings often broke off.

Today the facility is abandoned, and the well itself is mothballed and begins to collapse.

Naturally, all the equipment was dismantled, and the building, which has not been used for a long time, is slowly turning into ruins.

To resume work, a considerable amount is needed - about 100 million rubles, so no one knows whether the well will ever be opened.

Research results

Scientists believed that at a certain depth they would find a clearly defined boundary between granites and basalts. But, alas, all the works did not provide a clear understanding of the nature of the earth’s mantle. And then the researchers even stated that the place to start work was not the most successful.

Road to hell

This is what the Kola well is called. Moreover, there are still many rumors about her related to the other world. So, there are stories that at a depth of 12 kilometers, scientists’ equipment recorded screams and moans coming from the bowels of the Earth.

American television even officially announced this legend: in 1989, the Trinity Broadcasting Network television company told this story to its viewers. Well, then there’s more: you could still find interesting stories in the tabloid newspapers of that time. For example, that scientists heard screams and moans, but did not stop the research. And every kilometer was imprinted with misfortune on the country. So, when the drillers reached the 13-kilometer mark, the USSR collapsed. And at a depth of 14.5 kilometers, they generally discovered voids. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, the researchers lowered a microphone capable of operating at extremely high temperatures and other sensors there. The temperature inside reached 1,100 degrees - well, a real hellfire. And they heard human screams.

In fact, acoustic methods for studying wells do not record the actual sound and not on a microphone. They record on seismic receivers the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations excited by the emitter device with a frequency of 10 - 20 kHz and 20 kHz - 2 MHz. Well, we already wrote about the depth: no one reached the 13-kilometer mark.

However, one of the authors of the project D.M. Huberman later said: “When people ask me about this mysterious story, I don’t know what to answer. On the one hand, stories about the “demon” are bullshit. On the other hand, as an honest scientist, I cannot say that I know what exactly happened here. Indeed, a very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing similar was found at the same depth.”.

Perhaps we will end the story on such a mysterious note. Think for yourself, decide for yourself whether this is really the road to hell.

The oil company (OC) Rosneft, as part of the Sakhalin-1 project consortium, has successfully completed drilling the longest well in the world at the Chayvo field, the company’s information policy department reported.

Production well O-14 has the world's largest bore depth - 13,500 meters and a horizontal section of the bore with a length of 12,033 meters. It was drilled towards the extreme south-eastern end of the field from the Orlan drilling platform.

“This well is a continuation of the successful implementation of our outstanding project. I express my gratitude to our partners – ExxonMobil, thanks to the use of whose drilling technologies this achievement became possible,” said the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin.

During the implementation of the Sakhalin-1 project since 2003, several world records have already been set for drilling long-reach wells. For example, in January 2011, the oil well of the Odoptu-Sea field, drilled at an acute angle to the surface of the earth, with a length of 12,345 meters, became the longest well in the world.

In April 2013, well Z-43 was drilled, the depth of which was 12,450 meters, and in June of the same year, the world record was broken again at the Chayvinskoye field: the depth of well Z-42 was 12,700 meters, plus a horizontal section at 11,739 meters.

In April 2014, the Sakhalin-1 project team completed drilling the Z-40 well on the Chayvo offshore field, which, before the appearance of the O-14 well, had the world's largest borehole depth of 13,000 meters and a horizontal section depth of 12 130 meters.

Today, taking into account the new record deep well, the Sakhalin-1 consortium has drilled 9 of the 10 longest wells in the world.

The successful use of advanced drilling technologies makes it possible to reduce costs for the construction of additional offshore structures, pipelines and other elements of field infrastructure.

In addition, by reducing the area of ​​drilling and production sites, the advanced drilling technologies used by Rosneft help protect the environment.

The Kola superdeep well, planted in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth in 1970, remains the deepest vertical well in the world drilled on land. Its depth is 12,262 meters.

The Chayvo field is one of three fields of the Sakhalin-1 project. Located northeast of the coast of Sakhalin. The sea depth varies from 14 to 30 m; at the installation site of the Orlan platform with drilling and accommodation modules, the sea depth is 15 m, the distance to the shore is 5 km (near boundary) and 15 km (far boundary). The field was put into operation in 2005.

Installation of the Orlan platform was completed in July 2005, and drilling operations began in December 2005. The platform has a minimum of facilities for product preparation, since all produced products are supplied to the Chayvo onshore processing complex. The steel-concrete structure on which the drilling and accommodation modules are located is used to develop the southwestern and southeastern parts of the Chayvo field. The steel-concrete base of the Orlan easily withstands the onslaught of ice and giant hummocks reaching the height of a six-story building.

Sakhalin-1 is the first large-scale offshore project implemented in the Russian Federation under the terms of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), concluded in 1996. Shares of project participants: NK Rosneft - 20%, ExxonMobil - 30%, SODECO - 30%, ONGC Videsh Ltd - 20%.

The Sakhalin-1 project includes the development of three offshore fields: Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi, located on the north-eastern shelf of Sakhalin Island. The total recoverable reserves under the project are 236 million tons of oil and 487 billion cubic meters of gas. The first Chaivo field was put into operation in 2005, the Odoptu field in 2010, and the Arkutun-Dagi field in January 2015. Since the start of the project, 70 million tons of oil have been produced, and 16 billion cubic meters of gas have been produced and sold.

The Kola superdeep well is the deepest borehole in the world (from 1979 to 2008). 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 geological exploration, SG-3 was drilled solely to study the lithosphere in the area where the Mohorovicic boundary is. (abbreviated Moho boundary) is the lower boundary of the earth’s crust, at which there is an abrupt increase in the velocities of longitudinal seismic waves.

The Kola superdeep well was laid in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, in 1970. Sedimentary rock strata by that time had been 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. To extract minerals, such rocks are rarely drilled deeper than 1-2 km. It was assumed that already at a depth of 5 km the granite layer would be replaced by a basalt one. On June 6, 1979, the well broke the record of 9583 meters, previously held by the Bertha-Rogers well (an oil well in Oklahoma). In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.

Although it was expected that a clear boundary between granites and basalts would be discovered, only granites were found in the core throughout the entire depth. However, due to the high pressure, the compressed granites greatly changed their physical and acoustic properties. As a rule, the lifted core crumbled from active gas release into slurry, since it could not withstand a sharp change in pressure. It was possible to remove a strong piece of core only with a very slow lifting of the drill, when the “excess” gas, still pressed to high pressure, managed to escape from the rock. The density of cracks at great depths, contrary to expectations, increased. There was also water at depth that filled the cracks.

It is interesting that when the International Geological Congress was held in Moscow in 1984, at which the first results of research on the well were presented, many scientists jokingly proposed to immediately bury it, since it destroys all ideas about the structure of the earth’s crust. Indeed, strange things began even in the first stages of penetration. For example, theorists, even before the start of drilling, promised that the temperature of the Baltic shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 5 kilometers, the ambient temperature exceeded 70 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was hot stronger than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters.

“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” - David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,262 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake.

Another surprise: life on planet Earth turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sediments, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas. There were almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers at the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for where exactly. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the Moon, did nothing meaningful with it. They were placed in airtight containers and left for research by future generations.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. But, what is most surprising, at even greater depths, where there are no longer sedimentary rocks, natural methane gas was found in huge concentrations. This completely and completely destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas

Not only scientific sensations, but also mysterious legends were also associated with the Kola well, most of which turned out to be fictions of journalists when verified. According to one of them, the primary source of information (1989) was the American television company Trinity Broadcasting Network, which, in turn, took the story from a report by a Finnish newspaper. Allegedly, when drilling a well, at a depth of 12 thousand meters, the scientists' microphones recorded screams and moans.) Journalists, without even thinking that it was simply impossible to insert a microphone to such a depth (what kind of sound recording device can work at temperatures above two hundred degrees?) wrote that the drillers heard a “voice from the underworld.”

After these publications, the Kola superdeep well began to be called “the road to hell,” claiming that every new kilometer drilled brought misfortune to the country. They said that when the drillers were drilling the thirteenth thousand meters, the USSR collapsed. Well, when the well was drilled to a depth of 14.5 km (which actually did not happen), they suddenly came across unusual voids. Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, the drillers sent down a microphone capable of operating at extremely high temperatures and other sensors. The temperature inside allegedly reached 1,100 °C - there was the heat of fiery chambers, in which human screams could allegedly be heard.

This legend still roams the vast expanses of the Internet, having outlived the very culprit of these gossips - the Kola well. Work on it was stopped back in 1992 due to lack of funding. Until 2008, it was in a mothballed state. A year later, the final decision was made to abandon the continuation of research and to dismantle the entire research complex and “bury” the well. The final abandonment of the well occurred in the summer of 2011.
So, as you can see, this time scientists were not able to get to the mantle and examine it. However, this does not mean that the Kola well did not give anything to science - on the contrary, it turned all their ideas about the structure of the earth’s crust upside down.

RESULTS

The objectives set in the ultra-deep drilling project have been completed. Special equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling, as well as for studying wells drilled to great depths, 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 core to a depth of 12,262 m. The well gave an excellent gift to the homeland at shallow depths - in the range of 1.6-1. 8 kilometers. Industrial copper-nickel ores were opened there - a new ore horizon was discovered. And it comes in handy, because the local nickel plant is already running short of ore.

As noted above, the geological forecast of the well section did not come true. The picture that was expected during the first 5 km in the well extended 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 greatest reflection during seismic sounding is the level where the granites transform into a more durable basalt layer. In reality, it turned out that less strong and less dense fractured rocks are located there - Archean gneisses. This was never expected. And this is fundamentally new geological and geophysical information, which allows us to interpret the data of deep geophysical research differently.

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. Thus, at depths of 9-12 km, highly porous fractured rocks were encountered, saturated with highly mineralized underground waters. 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 considered suitable for industrial development). But will it ever be profitable to mine gold from such depths?

Ideas about the thermal regime of the earth's interior and the deep distribution of temperatures in 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 flow is of radiogenic origin.

The depths of the earth contain as many mysteries as the vast expanses of the Universe. This is exactly what some scientists think, and they are partly right, because people still don’t know exactly what is under our feet, deep underground. Over the entire existence of earthly civilization, we have been able to go deeper into the planet a little more than 10 kilometers. This record was set back in 1990 and lasted until 2008, after which it was updated several times. In 2008, Maersk Oil BD-04A, a 12,290 meter long inclined oil well, was drilled (Al Shaheen oil basin in Qatar). In January 2011, an inclined oil well with a depth of 12,345 meters was drilled at the Odoptu-Sea field (Sakhalin-1 project). The record for drilling depth currently belongs to the Z-42 well of the Chayvinskoye field, the depth of which is 12,700 meters.

It is no easier to penetrate into the secrets that are under our feet than to find out all the secrets of the Universe above our heads. And maybe even more difficult, because in order to look into the depths of the Earth, a very deep well is needed.

The purposes 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 interesting things there are inside our planet. Where these “windows” to the center of the Earth are located and what the deepest drilled well is called, we will tell you in this article. First just one clarification.

Drilling can be done either vertically downwards or at an angle to the surface of the earth. In the second case, the length can be very large, but the depth, if assessed from the mouth (the beginning of the well on the surface) to the deepest point in the subsurface, is less than that of those that run perpendicularly.

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

This well, 7520 m deep, 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 Yen-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 determine the profitability of developing large depths for mining.

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

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.

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However, it was not possible to drill such a deep well, as happens very, very often. During operation, machines often fail due to extremely high temperatures and pressures; the well is bent because the hardness of different rocks is not uniform; Often a minor breakdown entails such problems that solving them requires more money than creating a new one.

So in this case, despite the fact that the materials obtained as a result of drilling were very valuable, 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. There were gas and oil fields nearby, and geologists hoped that an ultra-deep well would make it possible to obtain super-profits in the field of mining.

Indeed, natural gas was discovered at a very significant depth - to the despair of specialists, it was impossible to extract it. Further drilling ended in an accident; the walls of the well collapsed.
There was no point in restoring it; they decided to drill another nearby, but nothing interesting for industrialists could be found in it.

6 Universities in the USA

One of the deepest wells on Earth is University in the USA. Its depth is 8686 m. The materials obtained as a result of drilling are of significant 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 the scientists who were right, but the science fiction writers: in the depths there are layers of minerals, and at great depths there is life - however, we are talking about bacteria!

In the 90s, Germany began drilling the ultra-deep Hauptborung well. It was planned to bring its depth to 12 km, but, as is usually the case with ultra-deep mines, the plans were not crowned with success. Already at just over 7 meters, problems with the machines began: drilling vertically down became impossible, and the shaft began to deviate more and more to the side. Every meter was difficult, and the temperature rose extremely.

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

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

4 Baden Unit

In the United States, 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 wild nature 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 allows it to be included 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. Only a short time later, the deepest well in the USSR, the Kola well, appeared.

Bertha Rogers was drilled by GHK, a company that develops mineral resources, primarily natural gas. The goal of the work was to search for gas at great depths. Work began in 1970, when very little was known about the bowels of the earth.

The company had high hopes for the site in Ouachita County, because Oklahoma has a lot of mineral resources, and at that time scientists thought that there were entire layers of oil and gas in 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 detected.

In addition, no scientific research was carried out during drilling, since the well was only of commercial importance.

2 KTB-Oberpfalz

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

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

The difference in diameter is not that great either. Ultra-deep wells start on the surface of the earth with a hole with a fairly 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 work had to be stopped is the same as in all other cases - equipment failure due to high temperatures.

1 The Kola well is the deepest in the world

We owe the stupid legend to a “duck” spread in the Western press, where, with reference to the mythical “world-famous scientist” Azzakov, they talked 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, by the way, it was published on April Fool’s Day): the temperature in the mine was no higher than 220 degrees, however, at this temperature, as well as at 1000 degrees, no microphone can work ; the creatures did not escape, 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 the length! Now we can name at least three wells - Qatar, Sakhalin-1 and one of the wells of the Chayvinskoye field (Z-42) - which are longer, but not deeper.
Kola gave scientists colossal material, which has not yet been fully processed and comprehended.