A plan for a 5 km-deep borehole at Reykjanes, Iceland, into the root zone of a black smoker on land

A summary workshop report describing the progress made so far by the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is presented below. The report provides recommendations concerning technical aspects related to deep drilling, and invites international participation in both the engineering and the scientific...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific Drilling
Main Authors: G. Ó. Friðleifsson, W. A. Elders, G. Bignall
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-16-73-2013
https://doaj.org/article/119b20a212384dd590131be8b35aac09
Description
Summary:A summary workshop report describing the progress made so far by the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is presented below. The report provides recommendations concerning technical aspects related to deep drilling, and invites international participation in both the engineering and the scientific activities of the next phase of the IDDP. No issues were identified at the workshop that should rule out attempting the drilling, sampling and testing of the proposed IDDP-2 well. Although technically challenging, the consensus of the workshop was that the drilling of such a hot deep well, and producing potentially hostile fluids, is possible but requires careful contingency planning. The future well will be explored for supercritical fluid and/or superheated steam beneath the current production zone of the Reykjanes geothermal field in SW Iceland. This deep borehole will provide the first opportunity worldwide to directly investigate the root zone of a magma-hydrothermal system which is likely to be similar to those beneath the black smokers on the world-encircling mid-ocean rift systems.