The legendary Kola superdeep. "Well to Hell": how the deepest well in the world was drilled in the Soviet Union

Many scientific and industrial works are connected with drilling of underground wells. The total number of such facilities in Russia alone is hardly calculable. But legendary Kola Superdeep since the 1990s, it has remained unsurpassed, going into the thickness of the Earth for more than 12 kilometers! It was drilled not for economic benefit, but out of purely scientific interest - to find out what processes are taking place inside the planet.

Kola superdeep well. Drilling rig of the first stage (depth 7600 m), 1974

50 candidates per seat

The most amazing well in the world is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. Its depth is 12,262 meters, the diameter of the upper part is 92 centimeters, and the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 centimeters.

The well was laid in 1970 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin. The choice of place was not accidental - it is here, on the territory of the Baltic Shield, that the most ancient rocks, whose age is three billion years old, come to the surface.

FROM late XIX century known theory that our planet consists of a crust, mantle and core. But where exactly one layer ends and the next begins, scientists could only guess. According to the most common version, granites go down to three kilometers, then basalts, and at a depth of 15-18 kilometers the mantle begins. All this had to be tested in practice.

Underground research in the 1960s was like a space race - the leading countries tried to get ahead of each other. The opinion was expressed that the richest deposits of minerals, including gold, are located at great depths.

The Americans were the first to drill super-deep wells. In the early 1960s, their scientists figured out that the Earth's crust is much thinner under the oceans. Therefore, the area near the island of Maui (one of the Hawaiian Islands) was chosen as the most promising place for work, where the earth's mantle is located at a depth of about five kilometers (plus a 4-kilometer water column). But both attempts by researchers from the United States ended in failure.

The Soviet Union had to adequately respond. Our researchers proposed to create a well on the continent - despite the fact that it took longer to drill, the result promised to be successful.

The project became one of the largest in the USSR. 16 research laboratories worked at the well. Getting a job here was no less difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Ordinary employees received a triple salary and an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. Not surprisingly, there was no staff turnover at all, and at least 50 candidates applied for each position.

space sensation

Down to a depth of 7263 meters, the drilling was carried out using a conventional serial installation, which at that time was used in the extraction of oil or gas. This phase took four years. Then there was a one-year break for the construction of a new tower and the installation of a more powerful Uralmash-15000 installation, created in Sverdlovsk and called Severyanka. In her work, the turbine principle was used - when not the entire string rotates, but only the drill head.

With each meter passed, it became more difficult to drive. Previously, it was believed that the temperature of the rock, even at a depth of 15 kilometers, would not exceed 150 °C. But it turned out that at a depth of eight kilometers it reached 169 ° C, and at a depth of 12 kilometers it was 220 ° C at all!

The equipment quickly broke down. But the work continued without stopping. The task of being the first in the world to reach the 12-kilometer mark was politically important. It was solved in 1983, just in time for the beginning of the International Geological Congress in Moscow.

Congress delegates were shown soil samples taken from a record depth of 12 kilometers, and a trip to the well was organized for them. Photos and articles about the Kola Superdeep were published in all the world's leading newspapers and magazines, in several countries they published stamps.

But the main thing is that a real sensation was prepared especially for the congress. It turned out that the rock samples taken at the 3-kilometer depth of the Kola well are completely identical to the lunar soil (it was first brought to Earth by the Soviet automatic space station Luna 16 in 1970).

Scientists have long assumed that the Moon was once part of the Earth and broke away from it as a result of a cosmic catastrophe. Now it was possible to say that the breakaway part of our planet billions of years ago was in contact with the region of the present Kola Peninsula.

The ultra-deep well became a real triumph for Soviet science. Researchers, designers, even ordinary workers were honored and awarded for almost a whole year.

Kola superdeep well, 2007

Gold in the Deep

At this time, work on the Kola Superdeep was suspended. They were resumed only in September 1984. And the first launch led to the biggest accident. Employees seem to have forgotten what's inside underground passage there are constant changes. The well does not forgive stopping work - and forces you to start all over again.

As a result, the drill string broke, leaving five kilometers of pipes in the depth. They tried to get them, but after a few months it became clear that this would not be possible.

Drilling work began again from the 7-kilometer mark. The depth of 12 kilometers was reached for the second time only six years later. In 1990, the maximum was reached - 12,262 meters.

And then the work of the well was affected by both failures of a local scale and events taking place in the country. The possibilities of the available equipment were exhausted, state funding decreased sharply. After several serious accidents, drilling was stopped in 1992.

The scientific significance of the Kola Superdeep is difficult to overestimate. First of all, work on it confirmed the conjecture about the rich deposits of minerals at great depths. Of course, precious metals in pure form not found there. But at the mark of nine kilometers, layers were discovered with a gold content of 78 grams per ton (active industrial mining is carried out when this content is 34 grams per ton).

In addition, the analysis of ancient deep rocks made it possible to clarify the age of the Earth - it turned out that it is one and a half billion years older than it was commonly thought.

It was believed that there is no and cannot be organic life at the superdeep, but in soil samples raised to the surface, whose age was three billion years, 14 previously unknown species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered.

Shortly before closing, in 1989, the Kola Superdeep was again in the center of international attention. The director of the well, Academician David Huberman, suddenly received calls and letters from all over the world. Scientists, journalists, just inquisitive citizens were interested in the question: is it true that the super-deep well has become a "well to hell"?

It turned out that representatives of the Finnish press were talking to some employees of the Kola Superdeep. And they admitted: when the drill crossed the mark of 12 kilometers, strange noises began to be heard from the depths of the well. Instead of a drill head, the workers lowered a heat-resistant microphone - and with its help recorded sounds reminiscent of human screams. One of the employees put forward a version that this the screams of sinners in hell.

How true are these stories? It is technically difficult to place a microphone instead of a drill, but it is possible. True, work on its descent can take several weeks. And it would hardly have been possible to carry it out at a sensitive facility instead of drilling. But, on the other hand, many employees of the well really heard strange sounds that regularly came from the depths. And what it could be, no one knew for sure.

At the suggestion of Finnish journalists, the world press published a number of articles claiming that the Kola Superdeep is a "road to hell." Mystical significance was also attributed to the fact that the USSR collapsed when the drillers were sinking the "unfortunate" thirteenth thousand meters.

In 1995, when the station had already been mothballed, an incomprehensible explosion occurred in the depths of the mine - if only for the reason that there was nothing to explode there. Foreign newspapers reported that a demon flew out of the bowels of the Earth through a man-made passage to the surface (the publications were full of headlines like "Satan escaped from hell").

The director of the well, David Guberman, honestly admitted in his interview: he does not believe in hell and demons, but an incomprehensible explosion really took place, as well as strange noises resembling voices. Moreover, a survey conducted after the explosion showed that all equipment in in perfect order.

Kola superdeep well, 2012

The well itself (welded), August 2012

Museum for 100 million

For a long time, the well was considered mothballed, about 20 employees worked on it (in the 1980s, their number exceeded 500). In 2008, the facility was completely closed and part of the equipment was dismantled. The ground part of the well is a building the size of a 12-storey building, now it is abandoned and is gradually being destroyed. Sometimes tourists come here, attracted by legends about voices from hell.

According to employees of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which previously managed the well, its restoration would cost 100 million rubles.

But oh scientific papers at depth, it is no longer a question: on the basis of this facility, one can only open an institute or another enterprise for training offshore drilling specialists. Or create a museum - after all, the Kola well continues to be the deepest in the world.

Anastasia BABANOVSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 5 2017

An attempt to study the geological section and thickness of volcanic rocks emerging on the surface of the earth prompted scientific centers and, like them, research organizations to identify the origin of deep faults. The fact is that structural rock samples, previously extracted from the bowels of the Earth and the Moon, were then of equal interest for study. And the choice of the point of laying the mouth fell on the existing huge bowl-like trough, the origin of which is associated with the presence of a deep fault in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula.

It was believed that the Earth is a kind of sandwich, consisting of a crust, mantle and core. By this time, sedimentary rocks close to the surface had been sufficiently explored in the development of oil fields. Exploration for non-ferrous metals was rarely accompanied by drilling below the 2000-meter mark.

The Kola SG (superdeep), below a depth of 5000 meters, was supposed to find a section of granite and basalt layers. This did not happen. The drilling projectile pierced hard granite rocks up to the mark of 7000 meters. Further, the sinking went through relatively soft soils, which caused the collapse of the walls of the shaft and the formation of cavities. The crumbling soil jammed the tool head so much that when lifting the pipe string broke off, leading to an accident. The Kola well was supposed to confirm or refute these long-established teachings. In addition, scientists did not dare to indicate the intervals where exactly the boundaries between these three layers pass. The Kola well was intended for exploration and study of deposits of mineral resources, determination of patterns and the gradual formation of fields of occurrence of raw material reserves. The basis was, first of all, the scientific validity of the theory of physical, hydrogeological and other parameters of the Earth's depths. And reliable information about the geological structure of the subsoil could only be provided by ultra-deep sinking of the shaft.

Meanwhile, the long-term preparation for the start of drilling operations provided for: the possibility of an increase in temperature as it deepens, an increase in the hydrostatic pressure of the layers, the unpredictability of the behavior of rocks, their stability due to the presence of rock and reservoir pressures.

From a technical point of view, all possible difficulties and obstacles were taken into account that could lead to a slowdown in the deepening process due to loss of time for tripping the projectile, a decrease in drilling speed due to a change in the category of rocks, and an increase in energy costs for downhole thrusters.
The most difficult factor was considered to be the constant increase in the weight of the casing and drill pipe as it went deeper.

Technical developments in the field of:
- increasing the carrying capacity, power and other characteristics of drilling equipment and equipment;
- thermal stability of the rock cutting tool;
- automation of management of all stages of the drilling process;
- processing of information coming from the bottomhole zone;
- warnings about emergencies with a drill pipe or casing string.

The sinking of an ultra-deep shaft was supposed to reveal the correctness or fallacy scientific hypothesis about the deep structure of the planet.

The purpose of this very costly construction was to study:
1. Deep structure of the Pechenga nickel deposit and the crystalline base of the Baltic Shield of the peninsula. Deciphering the contour of the polymetal deposit in Pechenga, coupled with manifestations of ore bodies.
2. The study of the nature and forces that cause the separation of the sheet boundaries of the continental crust. Identification of reservoir zones, motives and nature of high temperature formation. Definition of physical and chemical composition water, gases formed in cracks, pores of rocks.
3. Obtaining exhaustive material on the material composition of rocks and information on the intervals between the granite and basalt "gaskets" of the crust. Comprehensive study physical and chemical properties extracted core.
4. Development of advanced technical means and new technologies for sinking super-deep shafts. Possibility of application of geophysical methods of research in the zone of ore manifestations.
5. Development and creation of the latest equipment for monitoring, testing, research, control of the drilling process.

The Kola well, for the most part, met scientific goals. The task was to study ancient breeds, of which the planet is composed and the knowledge of the secrets of the processes occurring in them.

Geological substantiation of drilling on the Kola Peninsula

Exploration and extraction of deposits of useful ores is always predetermined by the drilling of deep wells. And why on Kola Peninsula and it is in the Murmansk region, and certainly in Pechenga. The prerequisite for this was the fact that this region was considered a real storehouse of mineral resources, with the richest reserves of a wide variety of ore raw materials (nickel, magnetites, apatites, mica, titanium, copper).

However, the geological calculation, made on the basis of a core from a well, revealed the absurdity of world scientific opinion. The seven-kilometer depth turned out to be composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks (tuffs, sandstones, dolomites, breccias). Below this interval, as expected, there should have been rocks separating the granitic and basalt structures. But, alas, the basalts never appeared.

In geological terms, the Baltic Shield of the peninsula, with partial coverage of the territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Karelia, has been eroded and evolved for millions of centuries. Natural outbursts, destructive processes of volcanism, phenomena of magmatism, metamorphic modifications of rocks, sedimentation were most clearly imprinted on the geological record of Pechenga. This is that part of the Baltic folded shield, where for billions of years geological history reservoir and ore manifestations.

Especially, the northern and eastern parts of the shield surface were exposed to centuries-old corrosion. As a result, glaciers, wind, water and other natural disasters, as it were, ripped off (scrapers) the upper layers of rocks.

The choice of the well site was based on the serious erosion of the upper layers and the exposure of the ancient Archean formations of the Earth. These outcrops significantly brought closer and facilitated access to the underground storerooms of nature.

Superdeep well design

Ultra-deep structures have a mandatory telescopic design. In our case, the initial diameter of the mouth was 92 cm, and the final one was 21.5.

The design guide column or the so-called conductor with a diameter of 720 mm provided for penetration to a depth of 39 linear meters. The first technical string (stationary casing), with a diameter of 324 mm and a length of 2000 meters; removable casing 245 mm, with a footage of 8770 meters. Further drilling was planned to be carried out with an open hole to the design mark. Crystalline rocks made it possible to count on the long-term stability of the uncased part of the walls. The second removable column, marked with magnetic marks, would allow continuous core sampling along the entire length of the wellbore. Radioactive markers on the downhole pipe were tuned to record the temperature of the drilling environment.

Technical equipment of a drilling rig for drilling an ultra-deep well

Drilling from scratch was carried out by the Uralmash-4E installation, that is, serial equipment used for drilling deep oil and gas wells. Up to 2000 meters, the shaft was drilled with steel drill pipes, with a turbodrill at the end. This turbine, 46 meters long, with a chisel at the end, was set in rotation under the action of a clay solution, which was pumped into the pipe at a pressure of 40 atmospheres.

Further, the drilling was carried out from an interval of 7264 meters domestic installation Uralmash-15000, from an innovative point of view, is a more powerful structure with a carrying capacity of 400 tons. The complex was equipped with many technical, technological, electronic and other advanced developments.

The Kola well was equipped with a high-tech and automated structure:
1. Exploration, with a powerful base on which the sectional tower itself is mounted, 68 meters high. Designed to implement:

• sinking of the barrel, operations of descent - lifting of the projectile and other auxiliary actions;
• retention of the leading and the entire pipe string, both on weight and during drilling;
• placement of sections (stands) of drill pipes, including collars, traveling system.

In the inner space of the tower, there were also means of the joint venture (descent - ascent), tools. It also housed the means of security and possible emergency evacuation of the rider (assistant driller).

2. Power and technological equipment, power and pump units.

3. Circulation and blowout control system, cementing equipment.

4. Automation, control, process control system.

5. Electrical supply, means of mechanization.

6. A complex of measuring equipment, laboratory equipment and much more.

In 2008, the Kola super-deep well was completely abandoned, all valuable equipment was dismantled and removed (most of it was sold for scrap).

Until 2012, the main tower of the drilling rig was dismantled.

Now only the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences is operating, which to this day is studying core extracted from an ultra-deep well.

The core itself was taken out to the city of Yaroslavl, where it is now stored.

Documentary video about the Kola Superdeep Well

New ultra-deep well records

The Kola superdeep well was considered the deepest well in the world until 2008.

In 2008, the Maersk Oil BD-04A oil well, which is 12,290 meters long, was drilled at an acute angle in the Al Shaheen oil basin.

In January 2011, this record was also broken, and it was broken by an oil well drilled in the Northern Dome (Odoptu-Sea - an oil and gas field in Russia), this well was also drilled at an acute angle to the earth's surface, the length was 12,345 meters.

In June 2013, the Z-42 well of the Chayvinskoye field again broke the depth record with a length of 12,700 meters.

The USSR is a country that surprised the world with many projects, grandiose both in scale and cost. One of these projects was called "Kola Superdeep Well" (SG-3). Its implementation began in the Murmansk region, 10 km west of the city of Zapolyarny.

Scientists wanted to learn more about the earth's interior, and "wipe the nose" of American scientists who abandoned their Mohol project due to lack of funds. To the question about what is the deepest well in the world, Soviet geologists dreamed of proudly answering: ours!

We will tell in detail in this article whether such an ambitious idea was successful and what fate awaited the Kola well.

Back in the 50s of the twentieth century most of material about the structure of the Earth was theoretical. Everything changed in the early 60s and 70s, when the US and Soviet Union started new version"space race" - a race to the center of the Earth, so to speak.

The Kola Superdeep Well was a unique project funded by the USSR and later by Russia between 1970 and 1995. It was drilled not at all for the extraction of "black gold" or "blue fuel", but purely for research purposes.

• First of all, Soviet scientists were interested in whether the assumption about the structure of the lower (granite and basalt) layers of the earth's crust would be confirmed.
• They also wanted to find and explore the boundaries between these layers and the mantle - one of the "engines" that ensure the constant evolution of the planet.
• At that time, geologists and geophysicists had only circumstantial evidence what happened in the earth's crust, and an ultra-deep well was needed to better understand the processes underlying geology. And the most reliable way is direct observation.

The drilling site was chosen in the northeastern part of the Baltic Shield. There lie little-studied igneous rocks, which are supposedly three billion years old. And on the territory of the Kola Peninsula there is the Pechenga structure, shaped like a bowl. There are deposits of copper and nickel. One of the tasks of scientists was to study the process of ore formation.

Even to this day, the information collected through this project is still being analyzed and interpreted.

Features of drilling an ultra-deep well

For the first four years, while drilling was going on to a depth of 7263 meters, a standard drilling rig called Uralmash-4E was used. But then her opportunities began to be missed.

Therefore, the researchers decided to use the powerful Uralmash-15000 rig with a 46-meter turbodrill. It rotated due to the pressure of the drilling fluid.

The Uralmash-15000 rig was designed in such a way that samples of the mined rock were collected in a core receiver - a pipe passing through all sections of the drill. The crushed rock got to the surface along with the drilling fluid. This gave the geologists the most up-to-date information on the composition of the well as the rig went deeper and deeper.

As a result, several boreholes were drilled, which branched out from one central well. The deepest branch was named SG-3.

As one of the scientists in the Kola Geological Survey said: “Every time we start drilling, we find the unexpected. It's exciting and disturbing at the same time."

Granite, granite everywhere

The first surprise that the drillers encountered was the absence of the so-called basalt layer at a depth of about 7 km. Previously, the most up-to-date geological information about the deeper parts of the earth's crust came from the analysis of seismic waves. And based on it, scientists expected to find a granite layer, and as it deepened, a basalt one. But, much to their surprise, when they moved deeper into the bowels of the Earth, they found more granite there, and did not get to the basalt layer at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer.

This is extremely important, as it is connected with the theory of the layered structure of the Earth. And with it, in turn, are associated ideas about how minerals arise and are located.

The Kola superdeep well is a source not only of the most valuable knowledge, but also of a terrible urban legend.

Having reached a depth of 14.5 thousand meters, the drillers allegedly discovered voids. Having lowered equipment capable of withstanding extremely high temperatures, they found that the temperature in the voids reaches 1100 degrees Celsius. And the microphone, before melting, recorded a 17-second audio, which was immediately dubbed "the sounds of hell." These were the cries of damned souls.

The story first appeared in 1989, and its first large-scale publication took place on the American television network Trinity Broadcasting Network. And she borrowed material from a Finnish Christian publication called Ammennusastia.

The story was then widely reprinted in small Christian publications, newsletters, etc., but received little to no exposure from the mainstream media. Some evangelists have cited this incident as proof of the existence of a physical hell.

• People familiar with the principles of operation of acoustic well survey tools only laughed at this bike. Indeed, in this case, acoustic logging probes are used, which catch the wave pattern of the reflected elastic vibrations.
• The maximum depth of the SG-3 is 12,262 meters. This is deeper than even the deepest part of the ocean - the "Challenger Abyss" (10,994 meters).
• The highest temperature in it did not rise above 220 C.

• And one more important fact: it is unlikely that a microphone or drilling equipment could withstand hellish heat above a thousand degrees.

In 1992, the American newspaper Weekly World News published an alternate version of the story that took place in Alaska, where 13 miners were killed after Satan broke out of Hell.

If you are interested in this legend, then on Youtube you can easily find videos with relevant investigations. Just don't take them too seriously, some (if not all) of the audio of supposedly suffering screams in the Underworld is taken from the 1972 film Baron Blood.

What scientists found at the bottom of the Kola superdeep well

• First, water was found at a depth of 9 km. It was believed that it simply should not exist at this depth - and yet it was there. We now understand that even deep-seated granite can develop cracks that fill with water. Technically speaking, water is simply hydrogen and oxygen atoms forced out by the enormous pressure caused by depth and trapped in layers of rock.

• Second, the researchers reported extracting mud that was "boiling with hydrogen." Such a large amount of hydrogen at great depth was a completely unexpected phenomenon.
• Thirdly, the bottom of the Kola well turned out to be incredibly hot - 220°C.
• Undoubtedly, the biggest surprise was the discovery of life. At a depth of over 6,000 meters, microscopic plankton fossils have been found that have been there for three billion years. In total, about 24 ancient species of microorganisms have been discovered that somehow survived the extreme pressure and high temperatures below the earth's surface. This raised many questions about the potential survival of life forms at great depths. Modern research has shown that life can exist even in the oceanic crust, but at the time, the discovery of these fossils came as a shock.

Despite all the efforts of the drillers and decades of hard work, the Kola ultra-deep well has passed only 0.18% of the way to the center of the Earth. Scientists believe that the distance to it is about 6400 kilometers.

Abandoned but not forgotten

Currently, SG-3 has neither personnel nor equipment. This is one of . And only a rusty hatch in the ground reminds of a grandiose project, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest human invasion of the planet's crust.

The project was closed in 1995 due to (you guessed it) lack of funding. Even earlier, in 1992, drilling work in the well was curtailed, as geologists were faced with higher than expected temperatures - 220 degrees. Heat damages equipment. And the higher the temperature, the harder it is to drill. It's like trying to create and maintain a hole in the center of a pot of hot soup.

By 2008, the research and production center operating at the well was completely abolished. And all drilling and research equipment was disposed of.

Results of the work

The valiant efforts of the participants of the Kola GRE lasted for several decades. However, the ultimate goal - a mark of 15 thousand meters - was never achieved. But the work done in the USSR, and then in Russia, provided a lot of information about what lies just below the earth's surface, and it still remains scientifically useful.

• Unique equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling were developed and successfully tested.
• Valuable information was obtained about what the rocks are composed of and what properties they have at different depths.
• At a depth of 1.6-1.8 km, copper-nickel deposits of industrial importance were found.
• The theoretical picture expected at around 5000 meters was not confirmed. No basalts were found either in this or in deeper sections of the well. But unexpectedly, not too strong rocks called granite-gneisses were discovered.
• Gold was found in the range from 9 to 12 thousand meters. However, they did not begin to extract it from such a depth - it is unprofitable.

• Changes have been made to the theory of thermal mode earth interiors.
• It turned out that the origin of 50% of the heat flux is associated with the decay of radioactive substances.

SG-3 revealed many secrets to geologists. And at the same time gave rise to many questions that so far remain unanswered. Perhaps some of them will be given during the operation of other ultra-deep wells.

The deepest wells on Earth (table)

Despite the fact that the 21st century is in the yard, internal structure Our planet has been studied very little. We know quite well about what is happening in deep space, at the same time, the degree of penetration into the secrets of the Earth can be compared with a light pin prick in the surface of a watermelon peel.
In the mid-1950s, when drillers learned how to make wells more than 7 km deep, humanity approached the implementation of a very ambitious task - to penetrate the earth's crust and see what is hidden under it. Our compatriots, who drilled the Kola super-deep well, came closest to this goal.
The solid shell of the Earth is surprisingly thin in relation to its size - the thickness of the crust varies between 20-65 km on land and 3-8 km under the ocean, occupying less than 1% of the planet's volume. Behind it is a vast layer - the mantle - which accounts for the bulk of the Earth. Even lower is a dense core, consisting mainly of iron, as well as nickel, lead, uranium and other metals. Between the crust and the mantle, a boundary zone stands out, named after the Yugoslav scientist who discovered it, the surface (border) of Mohorovich, or in short - Moho. In this zone, the propagation velocity of seismic waves increases sharply. There are a number of hypotheses designed to explain this phenomenon, but in general it remains unsolved.

The most important target of the most serious deep drilling projects launched in the second half of the 20th century was precisely this mysterious layer. The researchers failed to reach it, however, the data on the structure of the earth's crust, obtained during the drilling of ultra-deep wells, turned out to be so unexpected that the Mokhorovich boundary seemed to fade into the background. First, it was necessary to explain the riddles found in the higher layers.
The first for deep drilling of the earth's crust in scientific purposes the Americans took over. In the 1960s, they launched the Mohole scientific project, which involved the creation of underwater drilling ships using special drilling ships. Over the next thirty years, more than 800 wells appeared in the seas and oceans, many of which are located at depths of more than 4 km. The longest borehole was able to penetrate only 800 m into the seabed, and yet the data obtained were of tremendous significance for geology. In particular, they served as a weighty confirmation of the so-called. tectonic theory, according to which the continents are based on solid lithospheric plates, slowly floating, immersed in a liquid mantle.

Of course, the USSR could not lag behind its overseas competitor, so in the mid-1960s we launched numerous projects to study the earth's crust. Soviet scientists took a slightly different path, deciding to drill wells not in the sea, but on land. The most famous and successful project of this kind is the Kola Superdeep Well, the deepest “hole in the ground” ever made by man. The well is located at the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula. This place was not chosen by chance - for hundreds of millions of years, natural erosion destroyed the surface of the Kola crystalline shield, ripping off the upper layers of rock from it. As a result, ancient Archean layers appeared on the surface, corresponding to depths of 5-10 km for the average section of the earth's crust of the continental type. The 15-kilometer design depth of the well allowed scientists to hope to reach the mysterious surface of Mohorovich.
Drilling of the Kola well began in 1970, and it ended more than 20 years later - in 1994. At first, the drillers worked quite well traditional methods: a string of light-alloy pipes was lowered into the well, at the end of which a cylindrical metal drill with diamond teeth and sensors was fixed. The column was rotated by an engine located on the surface. As the depth of the well increased, new sections were added to the pipes. Periodically, the entire column had to be lifted to the surface in order to extract the cut core of the rock and replace the blunt bit. Unfortunately, this proven technology becomes ineffective when the depth of the well exceeds a certain point: the friction of the pipes against the walls of the well becomes too great to turn this whole huge shaft. To overcome this difficulty, the engineers developed a scheme in which only the head of the drilling rig rotated. At the end of the column, turbines were strengthened through which drilling fluid was passed - a special liquid that acts as a lubricant and circulates through the pipes. These turbines made the drill rotate.

The samples brought to the surface during the drilling process have revolutionized geology. The existing ideas about the structure of the earth's crust turned out to be far from reality. The first surprise was the lack of transition from granite to basalt, which scientists expected to see at a depth of about 6 km. Seismological studies indicate that in this area the speed of propagation of acoustic waves changes dramatically, which was interpreted as the beginning of the basalt basement of the earth's crust. However, even after the transition zone, granites and gneisses continued to rise to the surface. From that moment it became clear that the prevailing model of a two-layered earth's crust was wrong. Now the presence of a seismic transition is explained by a change in the properties of the rock under conditions of increased pressure and temperature.
An even more surprising discovery was the fact that rocks located at depths of more than 9 km turned out to be extremely porous. Prior to this, it was believed that as the depth and pressure increase, they, on the contrary, should become more and more dense. Miniature cracks were filled with an aqueous solution, whose origin remained absolutely unclear for a long time. Later, a theory was put forward, according to which the discovered water is formed from hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which are “squeezed out” from the surrounding rock under the influence of colossal pressures.
Another surprise: life on planet Earth arose, it turns out, 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At a depth of 6.7 km, where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 types of fossilized microorganisms were found. They were found in highly uncharacteristic carbon-nitrogen deposits (instead of the usual limestone or silica) that are over 2.8 billion years old. 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.
Scientists were also extremely surprised by the speed with which the temperature increased as the well deepened. At a mark of 7 km it reached 120 °C, and at a depth of 12 km - already 230 °C, which was a third higher than the planned value: the temperature gradient of the crust was almost 20 degrees per 1 km, instead of the expected 16. It was also found that half of the heat flux is of radiogenic origin. The high temperature had a negative effect on the work of the bit, so the drilling fluid was cooled before being pumped into the well. This measure turned out to be quite effective, however, after passing the mark of 12 km, it was no longer able to provide sufficient heat removal. In addition, the compressed and heated rock acquired some properties of a liquid, as a result of which the well began to swim during the next extraction of the drill string. Further progress turned out to be impossible without new technological solutions and significant financial costs, so in 1994 drilling was suspended. By that time, the well had deepened to 12,262 m.

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 sea ​​depths. 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 a project Mohole. Its name is derived from two words:

Moho a surface named after Andriy Mohorovichich- Croatian geophysicist and seismologist, who in 1909 singled out the lower boundary of the earth's crust, on which there is an abrupt increase in the speed of seismic waves;
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.

Vessel CUSS, which carried out the Mohole project

One of the main goals of the expedition "On the roads of the Arctic" was the Kola super-deep well (or object SG-3) - the deepest in the world. I first learned about it back in 2004, when I was a first-year student at the Geological Faculty of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, at a lecture on general geology. And since then I hoped to see everything with my own eyes.

Times have changed and, once hard-to-reach, the territory of the SG-3 facility is now in close proximity to the mining and processing plant of the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company. And the passage to the well goes through technological roads.

If you go by the navigator, then after the city of Zapolyarny it will lead to the checkpoint of the mining and processing plant. The guards, of course, will not let you into the territory, but allegedly I have not heard anything about the Kola Superdeep.

The management of the plant was expectedly tired of the constant pilgrimage to the Kola super-deep all sorts of neo-stalkers, geology lovers and metal hunters, so they dug up the road to the well with excavators and, for the sake of fidelity, covered it with cobblestones.

Therefore, we return to the place where in last time worked Mobile Internet and we are looking for a well-trimmed alternative road on the satellite. Having found the cherished lapel, we raise the hydropneumatic suspension of our Toyota Land Cruiser 200 Executive to the top position, and crawl along the hills towards the well.

The road, as befits a real adventure, abounded with all sorts of obstacles - fords, stones, even lakes.

Having already returned to Murmansk and analyzing the gps track (we wrote the entire route using the locme.ru service, I will talk about it later), I noticed that we were not going to the well by the optimal route and somewhere lost our way, but back passed as it should. What, I don't regret it one bit.

The track was recorded using the LocMe service.

And now, having climbed another hill, we have a view of the once majestic research and production complex of the Kola Superdeep Well.

In an effort to take a leading position in all industries at once, in 1962 the USSR launched its ultra-deep drilling program.

It took 4 years to prepare the project: the main difficulty was that, according to the geothermal gradient ( physical quantity describing the increase in the temperature of rocks with depth), the temperature at a depth of 10 km should be about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Neither the drilling tool nor the measuring equipment was designed for such a temperature. By 1970, just in time for the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, a drilling site was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. According to a report by the Institute of Physics of the Earth, the Kola Shield has cooled over billions of years, the temperature at a depth of 15 km should not have exceeded 150°C. According to an approximate section, the first 7 kilometers should be composed of granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, and basalts begin below. The drilling site was chosen on the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi (in Finnish it means “Under the Wolf Mountain”). Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

Despite the non-trivial task, no special equipment was developed for the work - they worked with what they had. At the first stages, the Uralmash 4E drilling rig with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy aluminum pipes were used. Expensive aluminum was used for a number of reasons: pipes made of "winged metal" have much less weight, and at temperatures above 150-160 degrees, the steel of serial pipes softens and holds multi-ton loads worse - because of this, the likelihood of dangerous deformations and breakage of the column increases. When the well reached depth 7000 meters, a new drilling rig was installed on the site "Uralmash 15000"- one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic tripping mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig has turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, recalcitrant to the strong winds raging in the Arctic. The weight of the drill string alone at 15 km depth would reach 200 tons. And the installation itself could lift loads up to 400 tons. A repair and mechanical plant, scientific laboratories and a core store have grown nearby. : in the 70s, rotary drilling was the most widespread, when the entire pipe string was turned by a rotor located on the surface. This method was excellent for relatively shallow wells, but when the length of the trunk approaches 7,000 or even 10,000 meters, rotary drilling becomes powerless. At SG-3, drilling was carried out using a turbodrill - a hydraulic engine, the rotation of which was provided by the energy of the circulating drilling fluid. Installed at the lower end of the string, 46 meter sections rotated the drill bit. Neither in the USSR, nor in the world at that time there was no experience of drilling in the rocks of the crystalline basement at such depths, and in addition to purely technological problems, the work was complicated by 100% core sampling. Penetration in one trip, determined by the wear of the drill head, is usually 7-10 m the rise of the 12-kilometer column takes about 18 hours. When lifting, the string is automatically disassembled into sections (stands) 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.

Approaching the territory of SG-3, we saw the "Loaf" and people fussily folding pieces of iron inside. This picture has long become familiar to the once advanced scientific center - it was assumed that the Kola super-deep well, after the completion of its drilling, would be turned into a unique natural laboratory for studying deep processes occurring in the earth's crust with the help of special instruments. However, in 2008 the facility was finally abandoned, and all more or less valuable equipment was dismantled. From that moment on, a period of plundering of everything that was of at least some value began - primarily metal.

The metal thieves, however, turned out to be quite sociable guys, they were sincerely surprised why we had come here from Moscow - “there was nothing left right there!” and showed the legendary well. Now it is mothballed, and its mouth is covered with a steel plate. What happens in the trunk itself - no one knows.

On the basis of SG-3, in addition to the drilling site itself, several research institutes, their own design bureau, a turning shop, and a forge worked. The most daring technical solutions were born right on the site, implemented on their own, and after a few days they were already tested in work. All this required energy and the Kola Superdeep was served by its own substation. Now the power unit looks like this, once 48 people worked here.

Crates with unique equipment are piled at the entrance. Everything valuable is torn out “with meat”:

A little further away are the pylons of the power lines. All wires, of course, have long been cut off.

According to the directive “from above”, only domestic equipment was used at SG-3, and it could not be otherwise: at first, the well was a top-secret sensitive facility. To a depth of 7 km, serial instruments were used. Work at great depths and at more high temperatures required the creation of special heat and pressure resistant devices. 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 equipment. The competition for employment amounted to dozens of people per place, and those who passed a rigorous selection were immediately given an apartment. At a time when an ordinary Soviet engineer received 120 rubles a month, an engineer at the Kola Superdeep was earning an incredible 850 rubles - three salaries and you can buy a car. In total, about 300 people worked at the Kola Superdeep.

The depth of 7000 meters turned out to be fatal for the Kola super-deep

Depth in 7000 meters turned out to be fatal for the Kola super-deep. Higher up the section, drilling proceeded relatively calmly, the drill passed through homogeneous strong granites. But after this depth, the drill head entered the less durable layered rocks, and the barrel could not be kept vertical. When the well passed the 12 km mark for the first time, the wellbore deviated 21° from the vertical. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the trunk, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be re-drilled from the mark of 7 kilometers. To receive vertical shaft in hard rock, you need a very hard bottom of the drill string so that it enters the bowels like a knife through butter. But another problem arises - the well is gradually expanding, the drill dangles in it, as in a glass, the walls of the barrel begin to collapse and can crush the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - the pendulum technology was applied. The drill was artificially swung in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical. June 6, 1979 the first thing happened historical event. Drillers reported on reaching the mark in 9584 meters. The Kola well became the deepest well in the world, surpassing the American oil record holder "Bertha Rogers" (9583 meters).

On June 6, 1979, the drilling foreman Fedor Atarshchikov made a triumphant entry in the logbook: “Full face - 9584 meters. Bertha Rogers, chao, goodbye.

Early 1980s There was also a second historical event. Kola Superdeep Passed 11,022 meters bypassing the Mariana Trench. At such a depth inside its own cradle, mankind has not yet fallen. One of the most common drilling accidents is a sticking of the drilling tool, a situation where crumbling walls of the well block the string and do not allow the tool to rotate. Often, attempts to pull out a stuck column end in its breakage. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well, they threw such a hole and started a new one, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes on SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part, the well looks like a root system giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be happiness for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive segment of ancient Archean rocks that formed more than 2.5 billion years ago.

Walking through the deserted corridors of the complex, despite the general monstrous devastation, you feel the former greatness of what happened here. In one of the offices, the floor is littered with rare scientific literature– Issues of the Defectoscopy magazine for several years and a manual for calculating drill strings for ultra-deep wells – uniqueness scientific work Roughly comparable to "Dummies' instructions for flying to the moon" if it existed.

In the other, miraculously preserved workplace drilling master. The first well in Russia was drilled in 1864 in the Kuban. Since then and until now - the master almost always works directly at the drilling site - to see and control everything that happens. But it was not so on the Kola Superdeep! The operator was sitting as far as 250 meters from the mouth and watched everything remotely, including drilling parameters. Space!

The walls are shabby, the windows are shattered by the harsh north wind, but it does not leave the feeling that a laboratory assistant is about to enter the office and kick out uninvited guests.

AT September 1984 depth was first reached in 12,066 meters, and then another break in the drill string happened. This was a real tragedy for the drilling crew, because they had to start all over again, all from the same 7 kilometers, again and again passing through cracks and caverns in the lower layer of the earth's crust. At the same time, within the framework of the World Geological Congress, the work carried out in the Arctic was declassified. In the scientific world, the SG-3 well made a splash. A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action, and 33-meter pipe sections were taken out and disconnected. Around were dozens of exactly the same drill bits as the one on the stand in Moscow. The USSR confirmed the status of an advanced power in the field of deep drilling.

AT June 1990 when SG-3 reached depth 12,262 m, preparatory work began for sinking up to 14 km, an accident occurred again. At the level of 8550 m, the pipe string broke. The continuation of the work required a long and expensive update of the techniques, so in 1994 drilling of the Kola super-deep was stopped. All possibilities modern technology were exhausted. After 3 years, she got into the Guinness Book of Records and still remains unsurpassed.

What did ultra-deep drilling on the Kola Peninsula give to mankind?

First of all, she refuted the simple two-layer structure of the Earth. Compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core, the geological section turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists had previously imagined. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the velocity of seismic waves in the rocks increased sharply, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed long ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth's crust did not appear anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began.
One of the most important goals of drilling was to obtain a core (cylindrical column rock) over the entire length of the well. 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.

Seismic sections in the bowels, as it turned out, are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different composition. Rather, they indicate a change in the petrophysical properties of rocks with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties change so much that granites become similar to basalts in their physical characteristics, and vice versa. It was believed that with depth and increasing pressure, the porosity and fracturing of rocks decrease. However, starting from the 9 km mark, the strata turned out to be anomalously porous and fractured. Through a dense system of cracks circulated aqueous solutions. Later, this fact was confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. At depth it turned out to be much hotter than expected: by as much as 80 °! At the mark of 7 km the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it reached 230°C. In the samples of the Kola well, scientists discovered gold mineralization. Inclusions of the precious metal were found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5-10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places. The Kola superdeep well aged the Earth by as much as 1.5 billion years: life appeared on the planet earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, more than 17 types of fossilized microorganisms, microfossils, were found, and in fact the age of these deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. And more than a dozen narrowly targeted discoveries.

In total, about 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled in the USSR

Few people know, but more than 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled in the territory of the former USSR (today, all or almost all of them have been destroyed). By special transects (measurement lines) they were connected to each other, obtaining regional geological profiles many thousands of kilometers long. Along the transect, special geophysical equipment was placed, which recorded all the processes occurring in the bowels in a single time. Until 1991, underground nuclear explosions were used as sources of excitation (an impulse that was recorded in wells).

This fundamentally new technical and methodological approach to solving the regional deep structure of the Earth's crust and upper mantle was based on the integration of ultra-deep and deep drilling data, as well as seismic deep sounding and other geophysical and geochemical methods. For the territory of the USSR, a system was developed for the mutual linking of geophysical profile data based on superdeep reference wells. All this made it possible to carry out a fairly detailed zoning, primarily of promising zones in terms of oil, gas and ore content, throughout the country.

The price of restoration is 100 million rubles?

In his interviews, the director of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that for 100 million rubles it is possible even now to restore the complex of the Kola superdeep well, open a scientific and technical center on its basis and train specialists in offshore drilling. It is quite clear to me that this is not the case. And the question, unfortunately, is not about money. A unique object comparable in scale and significance to humanity only with a manned flight into space has been lost. And lost forever.

After SG-3, many attempts have been made and are being made in the world to look into the deep horizons of the bowels of the Earth, but unfortunately, not a single project has come close in importance to the work carried out in the Arctic.

- What is the most important thing shown by the Kola well?
- Lord! Most importantly, she showed that we know nothing about the continental crust

How to get to the Kola Superdeep Well? Points, coordinates, etc.

1. From Murmansk by road A138 we are moving towards the city of Nikel;
2. At the point 69.479533, 31.824395 there will be a checkpoint where documents will be checked;
3. We go further to 69.440422, 30.594060 where we turn left;
4. We continue to move along the technological road to 69.416088, 30.684387 ;
5. The backfilled road should be on the right hand at the point 69.408826, 30.661051 ;
6. We go further and carefully look at the lapel on the left hand. I went here: 69.414850, 30.613894 ;
7. Then we move along the knurled path, but at the point 69.411232, 30.608956 you need to keep to the right.
8. The coordinates of the well itself 69.396326, 30.609513 .