The deepest boreholes on earth. Ultra-deep well on the Kola Peninsula: history and secrets The deepest well made by man

A huge number of ultra-deep oil wells have been drilled in the world, but not all of them have given the expected results. However, some of them are worth remembering.

The Z-44 Chayvo well, which was drilled in Russia on the shelf of Sakhalin Island, is considered the world's deepest oil well. It goes to a depth of about 13 kilometers - this depth is comparable to the height of 15 skyscrapers Burj Khalifa, which remains the tallest in the world. What is remarkable: the drillers penetrated to a depth that is twice the record altitude of a hot air balloon flight.

Wells on this shelf are expected to produce a total of 2.3 billion barrels of oil.

Previously, even before the drilling of Z-44 Chayvo, the leader in this regard was the famous Kola superdeep well (12,268 meters) in the western part of Russia. It was drilled during Soviet times - in 1970 near a lake with the virtually unpronounceable name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. It was assumed that this well would reach a depth of 15 kilometers, but due to high temperatures (up to 230°C) the work was stopped, although scientists still managed to obtain a lot of unique scientific data: for example, with its help the two-layer model of the structure was called into question earth's crust. The well is currently under conservation.

Another ultra-deep well - OR-11 - is also located in Russia. It was drilled to a depth of 12345 meters. This was reported in January. 2011 from Exxon Neftegas. OR-11 became the longest extended reach well.

OR-11 is located at the Odoptu field. The well set a record for the length of a horizontal well – 11,475 meters. The well was built in just two months. The length of its trunk was 12,345 meters. This well set a new world record for drilling wells with extended reach from the vertical (ERR), and OR-11 also took a leading position in terms of the distance between the bottom hole and the horizontal drilling point - 11,475 meters.

Well BD-04A, which is located in Qatar, was drilled in the Al-Shaheen oil field by Maersk to a depth of 12,289 meters. The length of the horizontal wellbore was 10,902 meters. We drilled BD-04A in a record time of 36 days. During the drilling work, Transocean's GSF Rig 127 drilling platform was used, which gained even greater fame in April 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Transocean was the operator of the emergency well under contract with BP.

The Bertha Rogers mine, located in the USA, has a depth of 9583 meters - this is another ultra-deep well. Drilled in 1974 in the Anadarko oil and gas basin in Oklahoma. The well was drilled by Lone Star for 502 days. Then work was stopped due to the fact that the miners stumbled upon a deposit of molten sulfur. The drilling work itself cost the company $15 million.

The same company drilled another ultra-deep well - the Baden Unit near the American town of Anadarko. Also in the USA. Its depth is 9159 meters. Drilling work began in 1970 and lasted 545 days. In total, 1,700 tons of cement were used for the well, as well as 150 diamond drills. And this well cost the company a fairly large sum - $6 million.

In Europe, the Hauptborung well, which is located in Germany, can be considered the deepest. It was drilled to a depth of 9101 meters. It was developed from 1990 to 1994. It was assumed that the drillers would be able to go to a depth of 12 kilometers, but, alas, it did not work out - due to very high temperatures, all work was curtailed, as a result they managed to reach 9.1 kilometers. Today, data on this well remains the most open - both for scientific and drilling work. Apparently, that’s why she remains the most famous in the world. :///

The dream of penetrating into the depths of our planet, along with plans to send a person into space, seemed absolutely impossible for many centuries. In the 13th century, the Chinese were already digging wells up to 1,200 meters deep, and with the advent of drilling rigs in the 1930s, Europeans managed to penetrate to a depth of three kilometers, but these were only scratches on the body of the planet. As a global project, the idea of ​​drilling into the upper shell of the Earth appeared in the 1960s. Hypotheses about the structure of the mantle were based on indirect data, such as seismic activity. And the only way to literally look into the bowels of the earth was to drill ultra-deep wells. Hundreds of wells on the surface and in the depths of the ocean have provided answers to some of the scientists' questions, but the days when they were used to test a variety of hypotheses are long gone.

Siljan Ring (Sweden, 6800 m)

At the end of the 80s in Sweden, a well of the same name was drilled in the Siljan Ring crater. According to the scientists’ hypothesis, it was in that place that natural gas deposits of non-biological origin were expected to be found. The drilling result disappointed both investors and scientists. Hydrocarbons were not detected on an industrial scale.

Zistersdorf UT2A (Austria, 8553 m)

In 1977, the Zistersdorf UT1A well was drilled in the Vienna oil and gas basin, where several small oil fields were hidden. When unrecoverable gas reserves were discovered at a depth of 7,544 m, the first well suddenly collapsed, forcing OMV to drill a second. However, this time the miners did not find deep hydrocarbon resources.

Hauptbohrung (Germany, 9101 m)

The famous Kola well made an indelible impression on the European public. Many countries have begun to prepare their ultra-deep well projects, but the Hauptborung well, developed from 1990 to 1994 in Germany, is especially noteworthy. Reaching only 9 km, it has become one of the most famous ultra-deep wells thanks to the openness of drilling and scientific data.

Baden Unit (USA, 9159 m)

A well drilled by Lone Star near the city of Anadarko. Its development began in 1970 and lasted for 545 days. In total, this well required 1,700 tons of cement and 150 diamond bits. And its total cost cost the company $6 million.

Bertha Rogers (USA, 9583 m)

Another ultra-deep well created in the Anadarko oil and gas basin in Oklahoma in 1974. The entire drilling process took Lone Star workers 502 days. Work had to be stopped when miners stumbled upon a molten sulfur deposit at a depth of 9.5 kilometers.

Kola superdeep (USSR, 12,262 m)

Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the deepest human invasion of the earth's crust." When drilling began in May 1970 near the lake with the unpronounceable name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, it was assumed that the well would reach a depth of 15 kilometers. But due to high temperatures (up to 230°C), the work had to be curtailed. At the moment, the Kola well is mothballed.

BD-04A (Qatar, 12,289 m)

7 years ago, exploration well BD-04A was drilled in the Al-Shaheen oil field in Qatar. It is noteworthy that the Maersk drilling platform was able to reach 12 kilometers in a record 36 days!

OP-11 (Russia, 12,345 m)

January 2011 was marked by a message from Exxon Neftegas that drilling of the longest extended reach well was close to completion. OR-11, located at the Odoptu field, also set a record for the length of a horizontal wellbore - 11,475 meters. The miners were able to complete the work in just 60 days.

The USSR is a country that surprised the world with many projects, grandiose both in scale and in 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 depths of the earth, and “wipe the nose” of the 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 talk in detail about whether such an ambitious idea was a success and what fate awaited the Kola well in this article.

Why did the USSR need a “journey to the center of the Earth”

Back in the 50s of the twentieth century, most of the material about the structure of the Earth was theoretical. Everything changed in the early 60s and 70s, when the United States and the Soviet Union began a new version of the “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 then Russia from 1970 to 1995. It was not drilled for the extraction of “black gold” or “blue fuel”, but purely for scientific 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 ensures the constant evolution of the planet.
• At that time, geologists and geophysicists had only indirect evidence of what was happening in the earth's crust, and ultra-deep boreholes were needed to better understand the processes underlying geology. Moreover, the most reliable way is direct observation.

The drilling site was chosen in the northeastern part of the Baltic shield. There are little-studied igneous rocks there that are believed to be 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 there. One of the scientists’ tasks 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 excavation was going on to a depth of 7263 meters, a standard drilling rig called “Uralmash-4E” was used. But then her capabilities began to fall short.

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

The Uralmash-15000 installation was designed so that samples of the mined rock were collected in a core receiver - a pipe passing through all sections of the drill. The crushed rock reached the surface along with the drilling fluid. This way, geologists received the latest information about the composition of the well as the drilling rig went deeper and deeper down.

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 on the Kola Exploration Exploration team 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 they deepened, a basalt layer. But, to their great surprise, when they moved deeper into the bowels of the Earth, they found more granite there, but did not reach 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 layer-by-layer structure of the Earth. And this, in turn, is associated with ideas about how minerals arise and are located.

The Kola superdeep well is a source of not only valuable knowledge, but also 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 there, they found that the temperature in the voids reaches 1100 degrees Celsius. And the microphone, before melting, recorded 17 seconds of audio, which was immediately dubbed the “sounds of hell.” These were the cries of damned souls.

The first appearance of this story was recorded 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 virtually no coverage from the mainstream media. Some evangelists cited this incident as evidence of the existence of a physical hell.

• People familiar with the operating principles of acoustic well exploration tools only laughed at this story. After all, in this case, acoustic logging probes are used, which catch the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations.
• Maximum depth of SG-3 - 12,262 meters. This is deeper than even the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep (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 alternative version of the story, which took place in Alaska, where 13 miners were killed after Satan broke out of Hell.

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

What scientists found at the bottom of the Kola superdeep well

• Firstly, water was discovered 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-lying granite in the ground 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 recovering mud that was "boiling with hydrogen." Such a large amount of hydrogen at great depths was a completely unexpected phenomenon.
• Thirdly, the bottom of the Kola well turned out to be incredibly hot - 220°C.
• Without a doubt, the biggest surprise was the discovery of life. At depths of over 6,000 meters, microscopic plankton fossils have been discovered that have been there for three billion years. In total, about 24 ancient species of microorganisms were discovered that somehow survived the extreme pressure and high temperatures below the earth's surface. This has 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 superdeep well was only 0.18% of the way to the center of the Earth. Scientists believe that the distance to it is about 6,400 kilometers.

Abandoned but not forgotten

Currently there are no personnel or equipment on SG-3. This is one of the. And only a rusty hatch in the ground reminds of the 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 causes damage to equipment. And the higher the temperature, the more difficult it is to drill. It's like trying to create and hold 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 Kola GRE participants lasted several decades. However, the final goal - the 15 thousand meters mark - was never achieved. But the work done in the USSR and then in Russia provided a wealth of information about what lies just below the earth's surface, and it remains scientifically useful.

• Unique equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling were developed and successfully tested.
• Valuable information was obtained about what rocks are made 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 5000 meters was not confirmed. No basalts were found either in this or in the deeper sections of the well. But unexpectedly they discovered not very strong rocks called granite gneisses.
• Gold was found in the interval from 9 to 12 thousand meters. However, they did not begin to mine it from such a depth - it was unprofitable.

• Changes were made to the theories about the thermal regime of the earth's interior.
• It turned out that the origin of 50% of the heat flow is associated with the decay of radioactive substances.

SG-3 revealed many secrets to geologists. And at the same time it raised many questions that still remain unanswered. Perhaps some of them will be produced during the operation of other ultra-deep wells.

The deepest wells on Earth (table)

Place	Well name	Years of drilling	Drilling depth, m.
10	Shevchenkovskaya-1	1982	7 520
9	Yen-Yakhinskaya superdeep well (SG-7)	2000–2006	8 250
8	Saatlinskaya superdeep well (SG-1)	1977–1982	8 324
7	Zisterdorf		8 553
6	University		8 686
5	KTB Hauptborung	1990–1994	9 100
4	Baden-Unit		9 159
3	Bertha Rogers	1973–1974	9 583
2	KTB-Oberpfalz	1990–1994	9 900
1	Kola superdeep well (SG-3)	1970–1990	12 262

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

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

Space under your feet

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

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

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

Baltic shield

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

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

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

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

Conqueror of the Depths

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

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

12,226 meters of discoveries and a little devilry

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

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

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

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

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

Demons

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

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

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

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

Kola

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

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

In 1983, the depth of the object was 12,066 meters. At this point, it was decided to suspend work in order to prepare for the International Geological Congress, which a year later was held in Moscow. In 1984, drilling continued. And then a new accident occurred - the drill string broke. It was decided to drill a new branch from a depth of seven thousand meters. By 1990, the depth of the branch was 12,262 m, and when the column broke for the umpteenth time, all work was curtailed.

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

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

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

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

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

Maersk Oil BD-04A

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

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

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

Odoptu-sea

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

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

30% of the project belongs to ExxonMobil, the same amount belongs to SODECO, and the remaining 40% is equally divided between ONGC and Rosneft. As of now, this is one of the largest Russian projects, which has received truly huge investments from abroad.

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