The deepest boreholes on earth. The road to hell: the deepest well in the bowels of the Earth

Many scientific and industrial works involve drilling underground wells. Total quantity Such objects in Russia alone are hardly calculable. But legendary Kola superdeep has remained unsurpassed since the 1990s, extending more than 12 kilometers deep into the Earth! It was drilled not for economic gain, but out of purely scientific interest - to find out what processes are happening inside the planet.

Kola over deep well. First stage drilling rig (depth 7600 m), 1974

50 candidates per position

The most amazing well in the world is located in 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, 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 location was not accidental - it is here, on the territory of the Baltic Shield, that the oldest rocks, which are three billion years old, come to the surface.

WITH late XIX century, the theory has been known 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 up 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 exploration in the 1960s resembled a space race, with leading countries trying to get ahead of each other. The opinion was expressed that great depth There are rich deposits of minerals, including gold.

The Americans were the first to drill ultra-deep wells. In the early 1960s, their scientists discovered that the Earth's crust was much thinner under the oceans. Therefore, the area near the island of Maui (one of the group Hawaiian Islands), where the earth's mantle is located at a depth of approximately five kilometers (plus 4 kilometers of water). But both attempts by US researchers ended in failure.

The Soviet Union needed to respond with dignity. Our researchers proposed creating 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. There were 16 research laboratories working at the well. Getting a job here was no less difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Ordinary employees received 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

Drilling to a depth of 7263 meters was carried out using a conventional serial installation, which at that time was used in oil or gas production. This stage took four years. Then there was a year-long break for the construction of a new tower and installation of a more powerful Uralmash-15000 installation, created in Sverdlovsk and called “Severyanka”. Its work used the turbine principle - when not the entire column rotates, but only the drilling head.

With every meter passed, the excavation became more difficult. 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 reached 220 °C!

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 start 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 Pit circulated in all the world's leading newspapers and magazines, and postage stamps were issued in its honor in several countries.

But the main thing is that a real sensation was prepared especially for the congress. It turned out that rock samples taken at a 3-kilometer depth of the Kola well are completely identical to lunar soil (it was first delivered 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 space catastrophe. Now it was possible to say that the breakaway part of our planet, billions of years ago, came into contact with the area of ​​​​the current Kola Peninsula.

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

Kola ultra-deep well, 2007

Gold in the deep

At this time, work on the Kola superdeep mine was suspended. They were resumed only in September 1984. And the very first launch led to a major accident. The employees seemed to have forgotten that changes were constantly taking place inside the underground passage. 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 deep. 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. They approached a depth of 12 kilometers for the second time only six years later. In 1990, the maximum was reached - 12,262 meters.

And then the operation of the well was affected by both failures on a local scale and events taking place in the country. The capabilities of the existing technology were exhausted, and government 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 guess about rich deposits of minerals at great depths. Of course, precious metals are in pure form were not found there. But at around nine kilometers, strata with a gold content of 78 grams per ton were discovered (active industrial production carried out when such content is 34 grams per tonne).

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 was commonly thought.

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

Shortly before its closure, in 1989, the Kola Superdeep Pipe again became the center of international attention. The director of the well, academician David Guberman, suddenly began to receive calls and letters from all over the world. Scientists, journalists, and simply inquisitive citizens were interested in the question: is it true that an ultra-deep well has become a “well to hell”?

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

How true are such stories? Technically, placing a microphone instead of a drill is difficult, but possible. True, the work to lower it may 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 well employees actually heard strange sounds that regularly came from the depths. And no one knew for sure what it could be.

At the instigation of Finnish journalists, the world press published a number of articles claiming that the Kola superdeep is “the road to hell.” Mystical meaning began to be attributed to the fact that the USSR collapsed when the drillers were excavating the “unlucky” thirteen thousand meters.

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

Well director David Guberman honestly admitted in his interview: he does not believe in hell and demons, but an incomprehensible explosion really took place, as did strange noises reminiscent of voices. Moreover, an examination carried out after the explosion showed that all the equipment was 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 at it (in the 1980s their number exceeded 500). In 2008, the facility was completely closed and some of the equipment was dismantled. The above-ground part of the well is a building the size of a 12-story building, now it is abandoned and is gradually collapsing. 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 owned the well, its restoration would cost 100 million rubles.

But oh scientific works at depth there is no longer any question: on the basis of this object it is only possible to open an institute or other 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 20th Century" No. 5 2017

Back in 1990, in the southern part of Germany, a group of scientists decided to look into the depths of our planet at the junction of two tectonic plates that collided more than 300 million years ago, when the continent was formed. The final goal of the scientists was to drill one of the deepest wells in the world, up to 10 km.

Initially, it was assumed that the well would become a kind of “telescope”, which would make it possible to learn more about the depths of our planet and try to learn about the Earth’s core. The drilling process took place as part of the Continental Deep Drilling program and lasted until October 1994, when the program had to be curtailed due to financial problems.

The well was named Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik, abbreviated KTB, and by the time the program was closed it had been drilled to more than 9 km, which did not add enthusiasm to the scientists. The drilling process itself was not easy. For 4 years, scientists, engineers and workers had to deal with a whole heap of difficult situations and quite complex tasks. For example, the drill had to pass through rocks heated to a temperature of about 300 degrees Celsius, but even under such conditions, the drillers still managed to cool the hole with liquid hydrogen.

However, despite the fact that the program was curtailed, scientific experiments they did not stop and carried them out until the end of 1995, and it is worth noting that they were carried out not in vain. During this time, we managed to discover new, quite unexpected facts structure of our planet, new maps of temperature distribution were compiled and data on the distribution of seismic pressure were obtained, which made it possible to create models of the layered structure of the upper part of the Earth's surface.

However, scientists saved the most interesting for last. Dutch scientist Lott Given, who, together with acoustic engineers and scientists from the Geophysical Research Center (Germany), did what many had dreamed of - almost in the literal sense of the word, he “heard the heartbeat” of the Earth. To do this, he and his team needed to carry out acoustic measurements, with the help of which research group recreated the sounds that we could hear at a depth of 9 kilometers. However, now you can hear these sounds too.

Despite the fact that KTB is on at the moment Considered the deepest well in the world, there are several similar wells, which, however, have already been sealed. And among them, a well stands out, which during its existence has managed to acquire legends; this is the Kola super-deep well-well, better known as the “Road to Hell”. Unlike other competitors of KTB, the Kola well reached 12.2 km in depth and was considered the deepest well in the world.

Its drilling began in 1970 in the Murmansk region (Soviet Union, now Russian Federation), 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. During drilling, the well experienced several accidents, as a result of which workers had to concrete the well and start drilling from a much shallower depth and at a different angle. It is interesting that it is with a series of accidents and failures that haunt the group that the reason for the emergence of the legend that the well was drilled all the way to the real Hell is associated.

As the text of the legend says, after passing the 12 km mark, scientists were able to hear the sounds of screams using microphones. However, they decided to continue drilling and while passing the next mark (14 km), they suddenly came across voids. After the scientists lowered the microphones, they heard the screams and moans of men and women. And after some time, an accident occurred, after which it was decided to stop drilling work

And, despite the fact that the accident really happened, scientists did not hear any screams of people, and all the talk about demons was nothing more than fiction, said David Mironovich Guberman, one of the authors of the project, under whose leadership the well was drilled.

After another accident in 1990, upon reaching a depth of 12,262 meters, drilling was completed, and in 2008, the project was abandoned and the equipment was dismantled. Two years later, in 2010, the well was mothballed.

Let us note that projects such as drilling wells such as the KTV and Kola wells are currently the only way and opportunity for geologists to study the interior of the planet.

In one of the scientific programs they gave a simple example that allows you to realize how huge our planet is. Imagine big balloon. This is the whole planet. And the thinnest walls are the zone where there is life. But people have actually mastered only one layer of atoms surrounding this wall.

But humanity is constantly striving to expand its knowledge about the planet and the processes occurring on it. We are launching spaceships and satellites, we stand submarines, but the most difficult thing is to find out what is under our feet, inside the earth.

Wells bring relative understanding. With their help, you can find out the composition of rocks, study changes in physical conditions, and also conduct mineral exploration. And the deepest well in the world will, of course, bring the most information. The only question is where exactly it is. This is what we will try to figure out today.

OR-11

It is not surprising that the longest well was made quite recently, in 2011. New, more advanced technologies, durable and reliable materials, and accurate calculation methods made it possible to achieve this result.

Surely you will be pleased to know that it is located in Russia, and was drilled as part of the Sakhalin-1 project. All work required only 60 days, which far exceeds the results of previous surveys.

The total length of this record-breaking well is 12 kilometers 345 meters, which remains an unsurpassed record. Another achievement is the maximum length of the horizontal trunk, which is 11 kilometers 475 meters. So far no one has been able to surpass this result. But that's it for now.

BD-04A

This oil well in Qatar is famous for its record depth at that time. Its total length is 12 kilometers 289 meters, of which 10,902 meters is a horizontal trunk. By the way, it was built in 2008, and held the record for three whole years.

But this deep well is known not only for its impressive size, but also for a very sad fact. It was built next to an oil shelf for geological exploration, and in 2010 it suffered a serious accident.

This is what the well looks like now

Drilled during the USSR, the Kola superdeep well lost its title of leader in 2008. But still, it remains one of the most famous objects of this type and continues to hold third place.

Preparatory work for drilling began back in 1970. It was planned that this well would become the deepest on Earth, reaching 15 kilometers. True, such a result was never achieved. In 1992, work was suspended when the depth reached an impressive 12 kilometers 262 meters. Further research had to be stopped due to lack of funding and government support.

With its help, it was possible to obtain a lot of interesting scientific data and gain a deeper understanding of the structure earth's crust. This is not surprising, since the project was initially completely scientific, not related to geological exploration or the study of mineral deposits.

By the way, the popular legend about the “well to hell” is associated with the Kola superdeep well. They say that when they reached the 11-kilometer mark, scientists heard terrifying screams. And soon after that the drill broke. According to legend, this indicates the existence of hell underground, in which sinners are tormented. It was their screams that were heard by scientists.

True, the legend does not stand up to criticism. If only because no acoustic equipment could operate at pressure and temperature at these levels. But, on the other hand, it is quite interesting to speculate that the deepest borehole will be able to reach, if not hell, then some other legendary and mythical places.

For now, they just help scientists better understand how our planet lives. And although the journey to the center of the earth is still very far away, people are clearly striving for it.

Kola superdeep well Since the end of the 19th 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. Just 30 years ago, researchers were sure that the granite layer begins at a depth of 50 meters and continues up to three kilometers, and then there are basalts. The mantle was assumed to be at a depth of 15-18 kilometers.

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

Three billion year dive

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

The first domestic projects also involved underwater drilling - in the Caspian Sea or on Lake Baikal. But in 1963, drilling scientist Nikolai Timofeev convinced State Committee according to science and technology of the USSR is that it is 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. The drilling site was chosen on the Kola Peninsula, which is located on the so-called Baltic shield, consisting of the most ancient known to mankind terrestrial rocks. The multi-kilometer section of the shield layers was supposed to show a picture of the history of the planet over the past three billion years.

Deeper and deeper and deeper...

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

The appearance of the well could disappoint an outside observer. No elevators or spiral staircases leading into the depths of the Earth. Only a drill with a diameter of a little more than 20 centimeters went underground. In general, the Kola superdeep can be imagined as a thin needle piercing the earth's thickness. A drill with numerous sensors located at the end of this needle, after several hours of work, was raised for almost a whole day for inspection, readings and repairs, and then lowered for a day. It couldn’t be faster: the strongest composite cable (drill string) could break under its own weight.

What was happening at depth at the time of drilling was not known for certain. Temperature environment, noise and other parameters were transmitted upward with a minute delay. Nevertheless, the drillers said that even such contact with the underground was sometimes seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below were similar to 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 could take this form 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.

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

Discoveries and finds

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

Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters. It was believed that there was a surface layer (young rocks), then there should be granites, basalts, the mantle and the core. But the granites turned out to be three kilometers lower than expected. The basalts that were supposed to lie underneath were not found at all. An incredible surprise for scientists was the abundance of cracks and voids at a depth of over 10 kilometers. In these voids, the drill swung like a pendulum, which led to serious difficulties in work due to its deviation from the vertical axis. In the voids, the presence of water vapor was recorded, which moved there with high speed, as if transported by some unknown pumps. These vapors created the very sounds that thrilled the drillers.

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

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

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

The Kola Superdeep was ahead of its time

The Kola well showed that it is possible to go 14 or even 15 kilometers deep into the Earth. However, one such well is unlikely to provide fundamentally new knowledge about the earth’s crust. This requires a whole network of wells drilled at different points earth's surface. But the times when ultra-deep wells were drilled for purely scientific purposes seem to be gone. This pleasure is too expensive. Modern programs ultra-deep drilling is no longer as ambitious as before, and pursues practical goals.

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

An attempt to study the geological section and thickness of volcanic rocks exposed 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 samples of rocks previously extracted from the bowels of the Earth and the Moon were then of equal interest for study. And the choice of the location of 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 studied during development 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, expected to detect a separation of granite and basalt layers. This didn't happen. The drill pierced hard granite rocks up to 7000 meters. Further, the excavation proceeded through relatively soft soils, which caused the collapse of the shaft walls and the formation of cavities. The crumbled soil jammed the tool head so much that during 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 risk indicating the intervals where exactly the boundaries between these three layers lie. The Kola well was intended for exploration and study of deposits mineral resources, determining the pattern and stage-by-stage 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 depths of the Earth. And reliable information about geological structure subsoil could only be obtained by ultra-deep shaft penetration.

Meanwhile, many years of preparation for the start of drilling operations provided for: the possibility of an increase in temperature with deepening, an increase in the hydrostatic pressure of the formations, the unpredictability of the behavior of rocks, their stability due to the presence of rock and formation 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 lowering and lifting the projectile, a decrease in drilling speed due to a change in the category of rocks, and an increase in energy costs for downhole movers.
The most difficult factor was considered to be the constant increase in the weight of the casing and drill pipe as they deepened.

Technical developments in the field have become successful:
- increasing the lifting capacity, power and other characteristics of drilling rigs and equipment;
- heat resistance of rock cutting tools;
- automation of management of all stages of the drilling process;
- processing information coming from the bottomhole zone;
- warnings about emergency situations with drill pipe or casing.

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

The purpose of this very expensive construction included research:
1. The deep structure of the Pechenga nickel deposit and the crystalline base of the Baltic shield of the peninsula. Deciphering the contour of the polymetallic deposit at Pechenga, coupled with the manifestations of ore bodies.
2. Study of the nature and forces causing the division of the strata boundaries of the continental crust. Identification of formation zones, motives and nature of formation high temperature. Definition of physical and chemical composition water, gases formed in cracks and pores of rocks.
3. Obtaining comprehensive 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 ultra-deep shafts. Possibility of using geophysical research methods in the zone of ore occurrences.
5. Development and creation of the latest equipment for monitoring, testing, research, and monitoring the progress of the drilling process.

The Kola well mostly met scientific purposes. The task included studying the ancient rocks that made up the planet and learning the secrets of the processes occurring in them.

Geological justification for drilling on the Kola Peninsula

Exploration and production of deposits useful ores is always predetermined by drilling deep wells. And why on the Kola Peninsula and specifically 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 rich reserves of a wide variety of ore raw materials (nickel, magnetites, apatites, mica, titanium, copper).

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

In geological terms, the Baltic Shield of the peninsula, which partially covers the territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Karelia, has been subject to erosion and evolution for millions of centuries. Natural outbursts, destructive processes of volcanism, magmatism phenomena, metamorphic modifications of rocks, and sedimentation are most clearly imprinted on the geological record of Pechenga. This is that part of the Baltic folded shield, where the geological history of formation and ore manifestations took shape over billions of years.

Especially, the northern and eastern parts of the shield surface were subjected to centuries of corrosion. As a result, glaciers, wind, water and other natural disasters, as if they were tearing off (scraping) the upper layers of rocks.

The choice of location for the well was based on severe erosion upper layers and exposure of ancient Archean formations of the Earth. These outcrops significantly brought closer and easier access to the underground storehouses of nature.

Ultra-deep 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 diameter was 21.5.

The design guide column or so-called conductor with a diameter of 720 mm provided for penetration to a depth of 39 linear meters. The first technical column (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 level. Crystalline rocks made it possible to count on long-term stability of the uncased part of the walls. A second removable column, marked with magnetic markers, would allow for continuous core sampling along the entire length of the barrel. Radioactive tags on the downhole pipe were configured 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 using a Uralmash-4E installation, that is, serial equipment used for drilling deep oil and gas wells. Up to 2000 meters, the trunk was driven through steel drill pipes with a turbo drill at the end. This 46-meter-long turbine with a bit at the end was driven into rotation by the action of a clay solution that was pumped into the pipe at a pressure of 40 atmospheres.

Further, the excavation was carried out at an interval of 7264 meters using the domestic Uralmash-15000 installation, from an innovative point of view, a more powerful structure with a lifting 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. Intended to implement:

• shaft sinking, projectile lowering and lifting operations and other auxiliary actions;
• holding the leading and entire pipe string, both in weight and during the drilling process;
• placement of sections (candles) of drill pipes, including weighted drill pipes (drill collars), and the traveling system.

The internal space of the tower also housed SP (descent-ascend) equipment and tools. Safety equipment and possible emergency evacuation of the horseman (assistant driller) were also located here.

2. Power and technological equipment, energy and pumping units.

3. Circulation and blowout control system, cementing equipment.

4. Automation, management, process control system.

5. Electrical equipment, mechanization equipment.

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

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

It was dismantled until 2012 main tower drilling rig.

Now only Kola works science center Russian Academy sciences in which to this day they study core extracted from an ultra-deep well.

The core itself has been removed to the city of Yaroslavl, where it is now stored.

Documentary video about the Kola superdeep well

New records for ultra-deep wells

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

In 2008, drilling was carried out in the Al Shaheen oil basin. acute angle to the surface of the earth is the oil well Maersk Oil BD-04A, the length of which is 12,290 meters.

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

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