Is Deep Drilling Easy?
What would we do if our aim was not to drill a simple water well, but a much more serious and deeper well, for example, an oil well many kilometres deep? For this purpose, special diamond-tipped auger systems are used, which can also drill through rocks. We had built a factory that produced special drilling rigs for drilling oil wells.
Have you ever drilled a well?
To put it simply, there are one or two methods of drilling wells by hand.
The most commonly used method is to stack interlocking concrete rings, one metre in diameter and eighty or ninety centimetres high, one on top of the other and dig from the bottom, slowly descending downwards under their own weight.
When one ring is sufficiently low, another one is added on top of it and thus wells deeper than 20 metres can be drilled.
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Depending on the ground conditions, it is also possible to drill wells mechanised.
With mobile auger machines specially designed for this purpose, the well is drilled to the desired depth and then concrete rings are lowered into the drilled well cavity.
But as I said, the ground conditions must be suitable for this method in order not to collapse the well.
Naturally, since this method is mechanised, it is possible to dig the well quite quickly.
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Another method is the method we call caisson.
In sandy areas where the ground is prone to collapse quickly, the use of this method is compulsory in a sense.
The caisson method can be summarised as the method in which the concrete is concreted down as you dig from above.
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Of course, these methods can be used for drilling a simple water well.
It is also possible to drill much deeper wells with large forecoring machines.
Of course, it would not make sense to mobilise such a machine for a single well, so much simpler, truck-mounted auger machines are used for water wells.
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Now, what would we do if our aim was not to drill a simple water well, but a much more serious and deeper well, for example an oil well many kilometres deep?
For this purpose, special diamond-tipped auger systems are used, which can also drill through rocks.
We had built a factory that produced special drilling rigs for drilling oil wells.
The drilling rigs produced in the factory were really produced with very specialised machines in the factory.
In fact, we had built a steel factory, and the main production facilities in the factory can be summarised as a large plant where the steel tower is made and a second plant where the pipes that are lowered into the borehole are produced.
Other buildings and structures can be described as auxiliary facilities.
In fact, a second-stage plant was planned for the preparation of the diamond bit, which is one of the main components of such a borehole, and I think there was a separate second-stage plant for the auger motor.
But for the time being, it was planned that only the production of the tower would be done here with the facilities in the first stage and special parts such as motor and diamond bit would be brought from the company's factories in other countries and assembled to the prepared tower.
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Yes, oil well drilling is a serious business.
Can you imagine, they go down to a depth of kilometres with that tower, and how powerful the auger engines have to be.
To be able to reach the torque to turn the huge diamond bit at that depth, then the pipes prepared in the factory must be of a quality that can withstand the torque at that depth, these are not simple things at all. It requires serious technology.
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Now imagine that our aim is not to drill an oil well, but to be able to dig much deeper.
What would you do, for example, if you needed a hole of a much larger diameter, not just a small one like an oil well?
Imagine, for example, that we need to do a special drilling to investigate what is deep inside the earth.
Imagine if we had to go tens of thousands of metres down.
It is not easy to drill such a hole from the surface, no matter how powerful the auger you use.
And in this case, no matter how high quality the drill pipes are made of, they will not be strong enough to withstand the rotation torque at such a distance.
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The solution is to drill by fixing the auger motor deep in the well.
Is there such a technology?
Yes, it is a rather expensive solution, but it is possible to do it.
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So is it worth all this expense just for research?
It depends on the research you do. It depends on what you are looking for and funding opportunities. With this being a state project, the necessary financing can be arranged.
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During the Soviet Union, an attempt was made to drill a very deep well for scientific research on the Kola peninsula.
Started in 1970, the excavation reached a depth of 12,262 metres in 1989.
However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the research was halted, and after 2008, when all the equipment was dispersed left and right, the project was abandoned and became idle.
For many years, the Kola deep borehole held the record for the deepest borehole in the world. It was also very useful in terms of obtaining many scientific data about the depths of the earth's crust.
Subsequently, the 12,289-metre BD-04A deep borehole drilled in Qatar in 2008 and the 12,345-metre borehole drilled by Exxon in Russia in 2011 in the Sakhalin region broke the Kola Peninsula drilling record.
However, since both of these new boreholes are not drilled directly into the centre of the Earth, i.e. they are slightly inclined, the Kola deep borehole still holds the record for the deepest borehole in the Earth's crust.
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As you can imagine, drilling this deep is a very costly endeavour.
There is no point in drilling so deep without financial support as a state project, and there is not much to be gained scientifically.
However, if there is a benefit to be gained, it is really worthwhile.
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But what could be such a benefit?
The thickness of the Earth's crust is about 35-40 kilometres on land.
While this thickness decreases to 8-12 kilometres at the bottom of the oceans, the crust of our earth is up to 70 kilometres thick on the Tibetan plateau.
From this point of view, the drilling depth of 12 kilometres is approximately one third of the depth for the land.
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Energy!
With the effect of technological development, our need for energy is increasing day by day.
If we look from the point of view of our country, although both oil exploration and natural gas exploration continue, we are still a very foreign-dependent state in these matters.
Although investments are being made in solar energy and wind energy, which have been on the agenda recently, these investments are also quite costly and technologically, unfortunately, they also involve foreign dependence.
Unfortunately, the issue of wave energy, which I always bring up, does not seem to have attracted the attention of those in power yet.
Our dams, coal power plants, yes, these are projects that have been invested in for years and now huge dams have been built on almost all our rivers, while coal resources are not preferred due to air pollution.
Also, although the nuclear power plant investment has finally started to be constructed, it has some drawbacks in terms of nuclear wastes, and we cannot control it. Because nuclear power plant investment is an investment with the risk of radiation leakage.
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After all, I have published a series of articles on energy before, where I have examined all kinds of energy sources in much more detail.
Today, I started the article on well construction, because another energy source that we do not use much in our country is geothermal energy.
Yes, through some cracks in the earth's crust, those molten rocks from the magma layer reach almost to the surface of the earth, and the water resources reaching such hot rock layers boil to the surface.
We have thought of building more spas in such places.
Health is also important, of course, I have nothing against hot springs.
However, our country also has a mountainous geography. Many mountains in this mountainous geography are extinct volcanic mountains.
In other words, if desired, geothermal energy resources can be reached by drilling to a certain depth in these places.
If the purpose is to obtain energy at an affordable cost, our country has potentially large geothermal energy resources.
We can even say that we are a geothermal energy rich country.
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Well, if this is so simple, why has not enough investment been made in this field until today?
Look, I really don't know the reason for this.
However, I cannot say that such an investment is an easy thing.
Besides, it seems to me that it is not an issue to be ignored.
When a sufficiently hot layer is reached with deep wells to be drilled to a certain depth, the rest remains to pump water into the well and convert the energy of boiling water into electricity with steam turbines.
The establishment of such a facility also requires huge investment budgets.
However, once you make such an investment, the resource is in your hands and you do not need to pay billions of dollars of oil or natural gas money every year.
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In the beginning, such a project should be carried out by the state, potential locations should be identified, perhaps sample facilities should be built in a few places, and the attention of the private sector can be attracted to the issue.
Why not?
We are suffering from so many earthquakes in this geography, why shouldn't we enjoy the geothermal resources?
My love and respect to everyone from Moscow.
