. Its not only not the worlds deepest oil well, its about 20,000 shy of the deepest oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly deepest in the world. In June 6, 1979, one of the boreholes in Kola, SG-3, took the record. Question: This is the first I recall hearing about that pool of molten sulfur at the bottom of a well in Oklahoma. Even so, Bertha Rogers reigned as the deepest well in the United States for three decades, finally exceeded in 2004., Although no gas was produced at its record depth, the well was successfully competed as a natural gas discovery at 13,000 feet. I seem to have come in late and may be way down the totem pole here, but your fundamental problem is trying to evaluate or estimate local processes based on some global average.. Luckily, the oil industry does not have such human obstacles, and drilling deep into the Earths crust is instead limited by a different set of circumstances how deep can the machinery and technology go before the unfathomable heat and pressure renders it inoperable? What I was getting at is that, as deep as the deepest producing wells are, the place where the original sediment exists is even deeper. From the article: The measured depth (MD) of the worlds deepest oil well is over 40,000. In terms of true vertical depth, the Bertha Rogers No 1 natural gas well in the Anadarko Basin used to be the deepest in the world, at over 31,400 feet. If oil companies (or any businesses) used EROEI to guide their investment decisions, they would go out of business (unless the government was footing the bill). A trip meant 8 hours around the rotatory table for each crew. Run of the mill T-storms are higher than this. The deepest hole by far is one on the Kola Peninsula in Russia near Murmansk, referred to as the "Kola well." I saw this after posting. In spite of Arrhenius misunderstanding of Fourier, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th Edition) reflects his initial opening description of the Greenhouse Effect: That is quite some subduction. I spend money to fill my gas tank. Hey..this sciency stuff is way too complicated but impresses the heck out of the Arts major who put it together. The Chayvo wells were impressive accomplishments, Apr 22, 2014 Extended-reach drilling project from onshore rig surpasses previous Sakhalin campaigns, sets world records for MD, By Vishwas P. Gupta, ExxonMobil Development Co; Angel H.P. Keep up with Union University events on campus and student, faculty and alumni engagement around the world. AAPG 2007 Annual Convention, Long Beach, California, April 1-4, 2007. I serve my customers with compassion, integrity, and tenacity. She was a former employee of Raytheon and retired from Bristol Tennessee School System after 24 years. We know because of the deepest hole drilled by humans into the Earths crust. In this way, over time, material that was miles under the surface of the ocean floor under miles of water, can wind up on the surface of the ground at the top of a mountain. And why is it. Join AOGHS and support historical content on this website. 21, 2017, 7:33 PM. According to Lone Star Producing Company, the bottom hole pressure and temperature were an estimated 24,850 pounds per square inch and 475 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. We actually do know where oil comes from. The drilling was started October 25, 1972 and it took Lone Star a little over a year and a half to reach 31,441 feet (9,583 m) on April 13, 1974. This was sometimes unpopular where wells were closely spaced. They eventually leak out or will eventually leak out. Engineers tend towards MD because thats where things actually are in the wellbore. If you insist I am sure you will find yourself in a basement wearing a Sinclair shirt, and theyll keep you watching videos made by geologists to make you believe oil comes from dead dinosaurs until you are left an empty husk who whispers source rock and TOC all day long. I know where oil does not come from, plants and dinosaurs at 40,000 feet. As long as its economically viable. The maximum bottom hole temperature (213F) was encountered in the Mississippi Canyon (MC) 777 TF001 well, drilled by BP. I had a fantastic weekend in OK City Luckily I didnt loose pressurisation otherwise I wouldnt be here to write this drivel! but then again it has been implied that I am ignorant of geology. Held by some guy named Larry, who had only planned to go up about 30 , but miscalculated. . As I think the author hints,, don't become too infatuated with the technology because it's expensive. Ive drilled wells deeper than 20,000 in the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time as rocks are being lifted up into mountain ranges, erosional processes are wearing them down again. UmJeff, pretty sure DM just gave you the opposite of a slang definition. The derrickman would snag at least one tripple each trip. Office of the World Energy Resources Program. Yet the worlds deepest oil well is not in the United States. including Medicare and Medicaid. It has been directly answered several times. Funny story I knew nothing about geology when I decided to major in Earth Science. A craton is an old, stable, block of continental crust which forms the nucleus of a continent. The Depraved and MOST Deplorable Vlad the Impaler, The Worlds Deepest Oil Well: How Bad Science Spreads on the Internet, Increase in U.S. Wildfires Due to Climate Change, Climate Change Will Increase the Number and Severity of Tornadoes. They can fill in. Greenhouse Effect noun the trapping of the suns warmth in the planets lower atmosphere, due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planets surface. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/11/another-failed-energy-prediction-peak-oil-demand/, Subduction and burial (i.e., sedimentation) are two completely different processes. We might see some day a well whose true vertical depth is indeed almost 50,000 feet. Germantown, TN 38138 Renewed assessment of some 22,000 cubic miles of deep sediments may carry over into the 21st Century. Or at least, ALSO of abiotic nature. Simply put, hydrocarbon cracking is the process of breaking a long-chain of hydrocarbons into short ones. However, the true vertical depth of the worlds deepest oil well is only about a very unremarkable 11,000 deep.. And then, this year, someone called out all the media who carried the Fuel Fighter infographic on their mistake. I know where oil does not come from, plants and dinosaurs at 40,000 feet. Bad and unhealthy habit.) A 1974 souvenir of the Bertha Roger No. Would the error of using MD for TVD be picked up by Facebooks Department of Truth and all references to it removed? Digging a hole straight down would seem to be the most effective way to study the Earths interior. Plateaus at the same altitude. It took over 50 years for anyone to beat his record. Until the 1960s,few companies couldrisk millions of dollars and push rotary rig drilling technology to reach beyondthe 13,000-foot level in what geologists called the deep gas play.. How deep into the ground are we able to go? Those that hit one of the deep productive zones had an extremely long production life for a gas well, and still had all the remaining upper zones remaining to complete in the future. Wow! For example here is a cell dynamics video I randomly selected. The most slots on a fixed platform (the largest category) in the Gulf of Mexico (US OCS) is 62 on the Mississippi Canyon 194 Cognac facility in 1,023 WD. The greater the hole angle, the bigger the difference. Bookstore Id take some time to reply, but unfortunately, Im expecting a call on the geophone from my friend, Moho. So, if not the O-14, which oil well is the deepest in the world? 250 Mya? These are generally erosional surfaces that formed during the periods of uplift. Bertha was a lifelong resident of the Bristol area and a charter member of Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church. Was it pure sulfur? Perhaps the most well-known effort to pierce the Earth is Project Mohole (began in 1961), which was an attempt to drill through the Earths crust in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico where the crust is shallow. Their chief innovation was that, instead of turning the drill bit by rotating the stem, in the Kola well the bit alone was turned by the flow of drilling mud. We're home to five men's and six women's athletics teams and a variety of intramural sports opportunities. For 20th Centurys final quarter the Basin remains the frontier of deep drilling technology centered on Elk City, Deep Gas Capital of the World. The average bottom hole temperature of those ten 20 million barrel producers was 197F. And would you please compare the areal extent of Mt. The Pacific plate is not being subducted beneath North America at the present time. It had to do with the original of the term greenhouse effect, and the various attributions thereof. Commercial aviation, the natural progression for older fighter pilots, presented its own challenges mostly the enormous responsibility of having close to 400 souls counting on my experience and judgement every time I went to work. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. Theres no evidence of significant abiotic oil formation on Earth at any time in its history. The reservoirs are relatively shallow, young (Miocene to Pliocene Epochs) and the entire total petroleum system is within the Neogene Period (less than 23 million years old. Of course since it was in the tropics it didnt have the dynamics to be severe but Im sure if it had been over the island there would have been flooding. There is subduction off the West Coast, but what is being and has been subducted is not the Pacific plate, but the Farallon plate, and it remnants, known as the Juan De Fuca plate in the north, the Cocos plate off of Central America, and a few slices called the Gorda and the Rivera plate, although the exact names and some of the details are still being disputed, including whether the Farallon was one plate or, more likely, a complex situation sort of like what exists now north and west of Australia. Todays infographic comes to us from Fuel Fighter, and it helps to visualize the mind-boggling depths of the worlds deepest oil well, which is located in a remote corner of eastern Russia. The Lone Star Producing Company 1-27 Bertha Rogers hole or well was an oil-exploratory hole drilled in Washita County, Oklahoma in 1974, and was the world's deepest hole [2] until it was surpassed in 1979 by the Kola Superdeep Borehole, dug by the USSR. The number of wells to drill all depends on the geology and of course the size of the accumulation. Mrs. Bertha Mary Rogers of South Boston, VA died Thursday, December 1st at the age of 82. The great expense and technological expertise necessary to complete ultra-deep natural gas wells at these depths made the Anadarko Basin the domain of the major petroleum corporations, explained Bobby Weaver, oil historian and frequent article contributor to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Then again, are we not all reminded over and over again how many people there are who have pretty much zero actual scientific knowledge? Yosemite Park is a famous example of this. Well, very deep. I suppose molten sulfur would count as economic basement. Subduction, in geology, is the process whereby a tectonic plate is forced down into the mantle of the earth. The deeper you go, the hotter it becomes as you approach the Earths mantle, which, near its border with the crust, can reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit. Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Its based on over 100 years of drilling. How do we know? My immediate thought was : how then did snow get on the top of Mt Everest ? The oil formed after the source material was buried to a sufficient depth to raise the temperature to 60-175 C for an extended period of time. Drilling stopped there at six miles (9.65 kilometers) when the bit hit molten sulfur. The challenge of retrieving broken (and often expensive) equipment obstructing a well fishing began tormenting oil and natural gas exploration companies since the first tool stuck irretrievably at 134 feet deep and ruined a Pennsylvania well. Screams in the deepest borehole. The presence or lack of 14C can also be indicative of the age. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DFHtvDA0W34I&ved=2ahUKEwj73Ky8897hAhVDmIsKHbfZCfAQwqsBMAB6BAgGEAU&usg=AOvVaw3fMJb2nOZzbkk6cRpI1kqX. In 1979 the No. Any high school student could make the paradoxes go away. I was at a lecture regarding super-volcanoes the Bruneau/Jarbidge in sw Idaho. Fuel Fighter Its Abiotic, Rockefeller had his hand in creating the label, Fossil Fuel Nonsense. Small forges were often just feet from the well bore. Hopefully, a better explanation will follow. There is also narrow basins with thick sediments along much of the coasts of the Atlantic. Bertha Rogers Bertha Mae Rogers, 82, of Carlisle, formerly of Shippensburg, passed away Wednesday, July 20, 2016 in the Select Specialty Hospital at Camp Hill. The equipment could not take the abuse at total depth. Some of my favorites are the high speed filming of lightning, and the ones showing clouds from space, where red sprites and blue jets and such are visible. They were 17,000 deeper than the deepest hydrocarbon bearing formation in the well. 1 reached a total depth of 31,441 feet where it encountered liquid sulfur. The deepest hole within the U.S. is the Bertha Rogers gas well in Oklahoma at 32,000 feet (6 miles) deep. This is perhaps the most geologically ignorant sentence I have ever read I seem to recall that at one point the Russians (was probably the Soviets at that point in time) had decided to try to drill all the way through Earths crust to test the idea that there could be primordial methane trapped down there. Bertha Rogers Executive Director at Bright Hill Press Inc Treadwell, New York, United States 500+ connections Like its predecessors, the Bertha Rogers as a business venture was a losing proposition, he notes. My pay check, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil & Shell credit card statements and checks to the gas & electric companies arent denominated in joules, kilowatts or Btu They are denominated in $. Cost me his lunch at the MIT faculty cafeteria, plus a couple of months of rewrite to respond to his many pointed comments. It was a science project in response to the US Project Mohole. The zones were layers, about 7 potential zones, the Granite Wash was the last one to test as you came uphole. David Middleton, thank you for your very comprehensive, informative reply. There is also a record-breaker in terms of water depth: Maersk Drillings Raya-1 well offshore Uruguay was drilled in water depths of 3,400 meters or 11,156 feet. Has any oil sample been found to scientifically date to prior to the beginning of the Triassic period, approx. The Deep Anadarko Basin of Western Oklahoma is one of the most prolific gas provinces of North America. The technology for mining the depths at which the solutions occur, however, is not yet available. My name is Bertha Martinez-Carmona and I am here to help you find YOUR home and listen to your needs to best assist you! Most of the seafloor has a thin veneer of sediment But, the depocenters have enormously thick sedimentary sequences. 11-12). We were running a three inch drill string on the bottom section of the well and a four inch drill string on the top. Science is not an argument. Jonathon Moseley, American Thinker, flashy (apparently widely distributed) Michael E. Mann, Material on this website is copyright 2006-2022, by Anthony Watts, and may not be stored or archived separately, rebroadcast, or republished without written permission. Sometimes many inches, sometimes barely moving, or just sitting mostly still, or spinning. 1) No reasonable explanation for why hypothesized abiotic oil production would not have existed sometime prior to about 500 Ma ago, given Earths approximate age of 4,500 Ma. I have enjoyed it all and am now embarking on a more cerebral journey; equally as challenging! Increasing Strength and Frequency of Hurricanes? which consist of Aristotle, Rogers, and Toulmin. Deeper sediments below 15,000 feet remain virtually unexplored. Horizontal wells drilled to tap poor quality rocks have to be designed considering the possible use of artificial lift equipment, and this imposes restrictions on the well radius of curvature and other issues. On 6 June 1979, the world depth record held by the Bertha Rogers hole in Washita County, Oklahoma, United States, at 9,583 meters (31,440 ft), was broken. Organic geochemical analyses of fine-grained rocks from the 9.590 km Bertha Rogers No. 1 in Washita County, drilled in 1971 to 31,441 feet, was then the world's deepest well. There is a difference between a wells actual vertical depth and the total depth of a well that is drilled first vertically and then at an angle from the vertical hole. The drilling was started October 25, 1972 and it took Lone Star a little over a year and a half to reach 31,441 feet (9,583 m) on April 13, 1974. Several different times for some of these rocks. Nonporous shale is shattered by high pressure fluids, and then the cracks are propped open with sand or some such material. An abiogenic hypothesis for oil contained in subsurface geological formations was first proposed by Georgius Agricola in the 16th century, and most recently was popularized by Thomas Gold from 1980-2000. Did it ever pay out the cost of drilling to 31,000? The main target depth was set at 15000 m. On 6 June 1979, the world depth record held by the . And thats not all. Excellence-Driven I do remember reading about the deepest hole ever drilled, and how it turned out to be a huge waste of money, but not sure if this was the same project? Tech Breakthrough Could Spark A Geothermal Energy Boom, Oil Prices Higher Despite Bearish Inventory Data, Unseasonably Warm Weather Could Help End The War In Ukraine, U.S. Oil Production Growths Path Is Clear, 180 Million Barrels Of Crude May Never Be Returned To The SPR, Saudi Arabia Is Open To Discuss Non-Dollar Oil Trade Settlements, Why Oils 7-Month Downturn May Be About To Reverse. But also keep in mind that the places where oil and gas are recovered are not the source of the material, but simply a place where the right conditions exist to trap a large amount of it as it percolates upwards . Roughnecking jobs today are for sissies and weaklings. The bottom hole temperature was 226 F. Temperatures are rising dramatically, Urban Heat Islands Do Not Exaggerate Global Warming, Climate Change is Causing Accelerated 21st Century Surface Warming, We are in the Hottest Ever Period Due to Climate Change, Climate Models have Accurately Predicted 30 Years of Warming, Instrumental Temperature Records Demonstrate Man-Made Global Warming, Tipping Point 1.5 Degrees Celsius Warming, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dqe01, NASA has a plan defend the Earth from asteroids, Fauxcahontas: total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2015GC006143, https://wordpress.com/post/debunkhouse.wordpress.com/6995, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/oil-where-did-it-come-from/, https://phys.org/news/2005-05-world-age-oil.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record#Hot-air_balloons, http://old.fai.org/news/personalities/35338-judyleden, http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2014/August, Climate Czar John Kerry: 'We planet saviors had extraterrestrial influence. When the derricks manila rope or wire line rope broke, a crewman lowered a hook and attempted to pull out the wells heavy iron bit. Site Map (2000). Impressive is too weak a word for these kinds of depths. Terms of Use About the Encyclopedia. In 1979 the No. It is not uncommon for people to get stuff wrong, and not very surprising. Volcanoes deposited material on top of the crust, and also sometimes magma welled up but never broke the surface, and the magma cooled deep underground. Rosneft states it on its website, in a press release on the completion of O-14, that the total depth of the well, including the vertical and the directional section, is 15 km, of which the non-vertical section extends 14.13 km, or 46,900 feet. One other observation: the higher ratio of gas to oil in the deeper (older) strata compared to that in the more shallow (younger) strata is consistent with the cracking of liquid hydrocarbons to produce gaseous hydrocarbons due to increasing heat with depth. Union's variety of organizations, events and sports offers something for everyone. Geologists knew far more about finding coal seams than characteristics of oil-bearing formations. More loosely, outside the field of petroleum chemistry, the term cracking is used to describe any type of splitting of molecules under the influence of heat, catalysts and solvents, such as in processes of destructive distillation or pyrolysis. Related: U.S. Shale Growth To Flatline Within 2 Years. Geos tend toward TVD because its the only way to correlate the well with other wells and the seismic data. Because of dangerous downhole conditions, including corrosive pockets of hydrogen sulfide, the historic well had to be completed at a shallower depth. The Bakken & Three Forks are well-within the oil window. Her most recent poetry collection, Heart Turned Back, was published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland, in 2010. The Bakken formation lies between 4500 ft. to 11,000 ft. with the Three Forks formation below it. Ultradeep oil well drilled in Washita County (Oklahoma, USA) in 1973-1974. However nearby hydrothermal vents with little to no sediment cover (rises) do not exhibit evidence of hydrothermal oil.. & USGS World Energy Assessment Team. While they do not appear to based on directly dating the hydrocarbons, the geological strata referenced and those strata in which hydrocarbons have NOT been found in any significant quantity does, to me, seem to rule out the abiotic oil theory on the following grounds: The Lone Star Producing Company 1-27 Bertha Rogers hole or well was an oil-exploratory hole drilled in Washita County, Oklahoma in 1974, and was the world's deepest hole until it was surpassed in 1979 by the Kola Superdeep Borehole, dug by the USSR. 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas = 1,037,000 Btu, Current prices: In rotary drilling, the only tools ordinarily used in the well are the drill pipe and bits, Day noted, adding that the rotary fishing tools, were comparatively free from the complexities of cable-tool work.. Sorry, thats for Gordon, not DM. Heres a cross section of the Williston Basin in North Dakota. No commercial hydrocarbons were found before drilling hit a molten sulfur deposit, which solidified around the drill string, causing the drill pipe to twist-off and a loss of the bottom-hole assembly. Severe ones are typically 50,000. Individual users must determine if their use of the Materials falls under United States copyright law's "Fair Use" guidelines and does not infringe on the proprietary rights of the Oklahoma Historical Society as the legal copyright holder of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and part or in whole. Join in! Details of course are sketchy is some cases, being as how people are trying to get a clear idea of events that occurred long ago, and for which there is often incomplete, conflicting, or unclear evidence. First, define the approachof each thinker and then compare and. I could spend 2 Btu of natural gas to produce 1 Btu of oil and make over a 2:1 return on capital. The Kola super-deep borehole wasnt drilled for hydrocarbons. Some parts of this region were only kind of swampy, or were large lakes, etc. 1 had to be completed at just 14,000 feet after striking molten sulfur at 31,441 feet. IOW, when someone finds oil where no sediments exist, then I think the idea will have some legs. Pretty much. 205 Indian Lake Blvd. "Even so, Bertha Rogers reigned as the deepest well in the United States for three decades, finally exceeded in 2004." Drilling strained the Bertha Rogers rig's equipment to the limit and the well had to be "fished" 16 months after drilling began (see Fishing in Petroleum Wells). The University of Alaska Fairbanks is an AA/EO employer and educational institution and prohibits illegal discrimination against any individual: Learn more about UA's notice of nondiscrimination. 2745 Hacks Cross Road Its mind-boggling that you seem to think its clever. P.S. WTI = $64.40/bbl = $11.25/million Btu There is now no reasonable doubt that over the continental areas of the world the earth's crust is about 20 miles thick, but only about half that in the oceanic areas. Photo by Bruce Wells. It wasnt the last time Lone Star/Enserch turned an exploration well into a science project/engineering demonstration. But I invite scientists more knowledgeable than me to comment on this., The greatest subduction is at the edges of the plates, such as on the American West Coast, where the North American plate is overriding the Pacific plate, which is plunging down into the mantle. I will cease asking questions on this subject matter in deference to those I have obviously upset. UUAlerts 1 barrel of crude oil = 5,722,000 Btu However, if hydrocarbons (both gas and liquid) tend to percolate/migrate upward against gravity, as others have mentioned, one wonders what mechanism/geology is so effective at preventing gas diffusion for as long as 400 million years? There is a lot of native sulfur in Gulf sediments. Water and halite (salt) are less dense than most rocks. Desperate GHK executives called a Houston fishing company. They are registered with several professional bodies, including the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), the British Psychological Society (BPS), as well as, BACP, UKCP and BABCP. Mud log from Well: BERTHA ROGERS 1 (2 LOGS) Operator: LONE STAR PRODUCING CO. That first map chart showing highest clouds at 29,000 feet is ridiculously wrong, as I am sure most people here know. Much of which wound up under the Gulf of Mexico as beautiful 30% porosity, 1,000 milidarcy permeability reservoir rock. . It was a beauty. I note that the NOAA graphic of total sedimentation across Earths oceans is generally consistent with the data presented in the Peter Olson, et. Submit a Correction The was an even more of a science experiment drilled south of Sayre towards Magnum & Granite. We wouldnt need offshore rigs to reach a lot of that oil and gas. According to Lone Star Producing Company, the bottom hole pressure and temperature were an estimated 24,850 pounds per square inch and 475 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. 74-89% of retail investor accounts lose money. Im not sure it is more close to reality than an Iron man action sequence and in fact it was created using the same technologies used to make the Marvel films. Digging down to take a look compares with studies made from the surface in the way that exploratory surgery compares with taking an X-ray. The problem I see is that rocks found below about 7 km of sediment tend to be low quality, temperature and pressure increase to the outer limits, and this hurts the economic returns to such an extent that looking for that deep oil can be a dicey business. However, if hydrocarbons (both gas and liquid) tend to percolate/migrate upward against gravity, as others have mentioned, one wonders what mechanism/geology is so effective at preventing gas diffusion for as long as 400 million years? In March 1974 in far western Oklahoma, after 16-months of drilling and almost six miles deep, the Bertha Rogers No. This motion is typically a few inches per year. The era of the gushers when oil didnt just flow out but burst out, is long over. It is produced by bacterial action when hydrocarbons come into contact with sulfate minerals (which are plentiful in salt deposits). Everest and all mountain ranges with elevations of 2 miles above sea level to the areal extent of all oil fields with producing layers greater than 2 miles below sea level? On the rig floor, fishing tools had to be lowered by a line into the well, armed at their end with spears, clamps and hooks. The jars, essentially and universally used in fishing with cable tools, consist off two heavy forged-steel links, interlocking as the links of a cable chain, but fitting together more snugly, he added. The standard commercial airline flight height is 39,000 feet. After five years, the Kola well had reached 7km (about 23,000ft). On April 13, 1974, Bertha Rogers No. Fracking of course is a method to make it possible to produce oil and gas from rocks that hold it, but are not porous/permeable enough to release it readily. She was born March 9, 1932 in Washington County, Va., a daughter of the late Walter Robert and Minnie May Smith Montgomery. The shallow water Lower Tertiary gas discovery at Davy Jones is well out of the oil window, but in the gas window and has never produced anything. Other than oil & gas, what do you think occupies the pore space in sedimentary rocks? The project cost over $100 million, which is about $2500 per foot. Am I still allowed to use a lighter to light my cigarette or do I need to go back to matches? 731-668-1818, Hendersonville / Nashville Campus However, if hydrocarbons (both gas and liquid) tend to percolate/migrate upward against gravity, as others have mentioned, one wonders what mechanism/geology is so effective at preventing gas diffusion for as long as 400 million years? I dont give energy back to the gas & electric companies in exchange for them being nice enough to heat and light my home. Become an AOGHS supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. Consequently, in other places, oceanic crust plunges down into the mantle and is recycled. Societies dont produce energy, businesses do. The Anadarko Basin is a geologic feature covering approximately fifty thousand square miles primarily in west-central Oklahoma, but including the upper Texas Panhandle, southwestern Kansas, and southeastern Colorado. On Russia's Kola Peninsula, near the Norwegian border at about the same latitude as Prudhoe Bay, the Soviets have been drilling a well since 1970. He has patiently explained it many times. Thanks for this precautionary tale of internet inaccuracies, illustrating succinctly why skepticism is an intrinsic part of a rational mind. Personal connection: Lone Star Producing became Enserch Exploration in 1975 and was my first employer in the oil & gas industry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight. & Geological Survey (U.S.). Well, does finding oil (petroleum) at over two miles below the surface support the abiotic theory of oil formation or not? There is only one possible solution to make the paradoxes go away. Then jumped out with just a parachute. In many place around the globe oil is found below land surfaces that currently are hundreds to thousands of feet ABOVE sea level. See the About>Contact menu under the header. Coral Reefs are Dying Because of Climate Change, Coal Pollution Can Be Seen Pouring From Power Plant Smokestacks, Greenland Ice Loss Will Cause Dangerous Sea Level Rise, Sea Level Rise is Accelerating Dramatically, The Global Temperature Record Says We Are in a Climate Emergency, The 130-Degree F Reading in Death Valley Is A World Record, Unprecedented Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest was Driven by Climate Change. What is more so is when erroneous sources are quoted by others, including what one might think are more reliable sources of info. Thats only done in very large fields in extreme conditions, say where water depth is over 100 meters and the seafloor is highly unstable, when developing offshore in areas where theres icebergs or sea ice, in very sensitive areas such as a swamp within a nature preserve, etc. On top of the range there is a strange, flat plateau. I worked on a project offshore Greece that had crude oil that was 70% liquid hydrogen sulfide. A subject explored in some depth in my ebook The Arts of Truth. In other words, the true vertical depth of the well is less than 1 km or 3,280 feet. But people that are aware that pretty much all knowledge is provisional, to at least a certain extent, have a far better chance of doing so. At least it is easier than ever to check stuff, but the problem is, one has to have the idea that something is wrong or at least dubious, in order to make a decision to check. Given the shear hysterics around AGM put around by people with very weak understandings of the sciences, who is surprised if they get the numbers wrong.who cares but isnt the graphic very pretty? It includes the Hugoton-Panhandle field, the Union City field and the Elk City field and is among the most prolific natural gas producing areas in North America. This process is called orogeny, and has occurred many times in the history of the Earth. Seabird deaths part of Arctic Report Card, Ancient moose antlers hint of early arrival. In an inert environment, aromatics, naphthenes and paraffins can be stable up to 1000F or even higher. I was just looking at one report of a storm near the Texas Mexico border than reached 75,000. 1 well was the deepest in the United States. It was completed as as gas well in the Granite Wash at about 13,000. Walker Ridge 758 Chevron #1 is the deepest active oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico; drilled to a true vertical depth (TVD) of 28,497 (8.7 km) in a water depth of 6,959. I especially like how they depict it as soil the entire way down. Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. The measured depth (MD) of the worlds deepest oil well is over 40,000. ROBERT ALEXANDER HEFNER III, PETROLEUM INDUSTRY. Ghawars source rocks are an organic-rich Silurian shale formation. In the Sweetwater Gas field ( Jct 6 & US 283 , north of Sayer, OK ) most of the wells in the field were drilled to 20k 25k ft. Sweetwater field is also the site of a huge blow out, the Apache Keys #1, in 1982, when the tree was blown off the wellhead. In this case I had filed this away for a couple of years. Completion designs were optimized to successfully run an approximately 3,600-m open-hole completion, and the well was finished in approximately 70 days. At 31,441 feet, the Bertha Rogers well held a record at the turn of the twenty-first century as the world's deepest producing well. Is the U.S. The basin contains sedimentary deposits ranging in thickness from two thousand feet on its northern and western flanks to forty thousand feet in its southern portion. Id hate to be pulling slips on that rig. Get to know us - Dr Bertha Rogers At our practice in Oxford Circus (W1W), all of our therapists are qualified psychologists, psychotherapists or counsellors. In addition to the important bearing that this discovery has on the general geophysical sciences, there is a potential economic impact. Youve gotta wonder how high they were when they made that graphic. The Hugoton Embayment of the Anadarko Basin is 5,000 feet vertical TD. The overriding factor is economics which is frighteningly skewed today in the world of wind and solar. Tabular salt acts like a radiator. Photo courtesy Library of Congress. This mud log sample shows drilling rate and lithology from 4700 ft to . I have a little desk plaque with two pockets one containing sulfur crystals and the other with rock cuttings from the Bertha Rogers Well. In 1980, the Oklahoma Historical Society and Oklahoma Petroleum Council dedicated a granite monument at Third and Pioneer streets in Elk City, Oklahoma. Many of the executives had pieces of sulfur that were recovered from the Bertha Rogers well. In this manner, they were able to eliminate rotation of the entire drill string above. (Hmmmshould I close with a sarc/tag or a smiley face?). As old ocean plates are subducted, sometimes islands, sediments, and anything else sitting on top of them is scraped off and accreted in the area adjacent to the subduction zone. Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). On November 26, 2005, Vijaypat Singhania set the world altitude record for highest hot-air-balloon flight, reaching 21,290 m (69,850 ft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record#Hot-air_balloons, And for good measure, renown hang glider pilot, Judy Leden broke the World Hang Gliding Altitude Record by being towed to 41,307 feet by a hot air balloon. 500+ million years of subsidence and uplift resulted in the Devonian-aged (~360 Ma) Bakken formation (green/yellow layer) being at depths ranging from about -4,500 to -8,500 below sea level. If you add in the pipe run horizonal over a mile or two you have a number of deep long wells. Some observers classified it as an ultra-deep dry hole.. However, the true vertical depth of the worlds deepest oil well is only about a very unremarkable 11,000 deep The Z-44 well was designed for a horizontal completion, so its measured depth was exceptionally long. This mud log sample shows drilling rate and lithology from 4700 ft to 31440 ft at an elevation of 1893 ft in WASHITA County, OKLAHOMA. At the maximum rate, this would only account for 2200 m of sedimentation over two hundred million years . The term fishing came from early percussion drilling using cable-tools. Bertha was a daughter of the late Toy and Ada O'Quinn Jackson. Key challenges included high torque and drag, wellbore positioning in a thin oil column, wellbore stability, long horizontal completions, and downhole tool telemetry. McKinley. Practically all of these discoveries developed at depths of less than ten thousand feet. Ten years ago, the latest data from the Energy Information Administration shows, the average depth of U.S. exploration oil wells was almost 7,800 feet. The Earths crust is broken into many smaller plates that slide very slowly over a more mobile or plastic material called the asthenosphere. Wow! Among the fishing tools at the mans feet are 3.5-inch iron poles, each 20 feet in length and weighing 500 pounds. The raw material in Cretaceous source rocks was deposited during the Cretaceous Period. I can sort of understand the use of abiotic. But, dinosaurs implies that there isnt even a starting point for communication. contrast them as you understand their similaritiesand differences. Many lakes exist at very high places. In the worlds deepest gold mine, workers will venture 2.5 miles (4 km) below the Earths surface to extract from a 30-inch (0.8m) wide vein of gold-rich ore. Slow moving currents in the layers under the crust push the plates around the planet over time. Other plates have been, and still are, doing so. Plate tectonics, prevailing idea of the particulars of Earth history, the entire discipline of physical geography these are not vague ideas or based on some shoestring hypotheses. The Tiber wells depth - true vertical depth - was more than 35,000 feet. Since then, numerous gas wells have been drilled there below the twenty thousand foot range, including the Lone Star Bertha Rogers in Beckham County. I recall the interview I saw, in which after he stepped off his platform, he thought he was not falling and was going to die when his oxygen ran out, since he was so high there was no sensation of wind rushing past him. The second drilling campaign at the Chayvo field, located offshore Sakhalin Island, targeted a new reservoir zone using extended-reach wells from onshore. Each are well described, extensively supported, and largely uncontroversial, at least as regards the big picture. These descriptions of the Greenhouse Effect all evade the key question of heat transfer., http://geologist-1011.net/net/greenhouse/. To scientists, one of the more fascinating findings to emerge from this well is that the change in seismic velocities was not found at a boundary marking Jeffreys' hypothetical transition from granite to basalt; it was at the bottom of a layer of metamorphic rock (rock which has been intensively reworked by heat and pressure) that extended from about 3 to about 6 miles beneath the surface. True vertical depth is how deep the well was drilled. Seriously, the Russians were right all along, oil is obviously of abiotic nature. The deepest Bakken is about 8,500 below sea level. So, the temperature in an ultradeep borehole is not just higher than surface temps: it tops 180 degrees Celsius at a depth of 12 km, or 39,370 feet. The notion I have of oil has to do with sedimentation, not subduction. Well, if you say Mt. This sidesteps the basic question of how so much organic material (eliminating an abiotic origin) became so deeply buriedvia subduction, subsidence or sedimentation overlayin the first place to eventually allow its transformation into oil and its percolation upwards. Describing cable tool operations, he explained that the basic principle of well fishing tools often involved milled wedges on a spear or in a cylinder for recovering lost tubing or casing. Yeap, Kyle M. Fischer, Randall S. Mathis, Exxon Neftegas; Michael J. Egan, consultant to Exxon Neftegas. Most rotary fishing jobs were caused by twist offs (broken drill pipe), although the bit, drill coupling or tool joints may break or unscrew. It's possible to draw a reasonable cross section of the earth based purely on remote geophysical (largely seismic) methods, but unless on-the-spot checks can be made, there will always be a certain amount of guesswork involved. Drilling four times further in a horizontal direction than in a vertical direction is impressive indeed. Much information comes from such holes; for example, the bottom of this hole was about 370F (190C). Separately, do you know if oil extracted from vertical depths greater than, say, 5,000 m (~16,000 ft TVD) below land/seafloor surface has ever been scientifically age-dated? Terrific post. A 19th century cable-tool rig, like its ancient predecessor the spring pole, utilized percussion drilling the repeated lifting and dropping of a heavy chisel using hemp ropes. Rough schematic comparing relative dimensions of earth's crustal thickness, depth of the Kola well, and height of Mt. Even then, the oil & gas arent permanently trapped. Several hundred of her poems appear in literary journals, anthologies, and in her poetry collections, including Wild, Again; Heart Turned Back; Sleeper, You Wake; Even the Hemlock; A House of Corners; and The Fourth Beast. After my first Physical Geology class in September 1976, I realized that I knew even less than I thought I did . Are they against the benefits fuel does for people? wildcat well to a depth of 31,441 feet (9,583 m) in Beckham County, Okla., in the Anadarko basin. The combination of thick layers of salt and deep water depths enable oil to exist at depths previously unexpected. There goes The Population Bomb! In terms of true vertical depth, the Bertha Rogers No 1 natural gas well in the Anadarko Basin used to be the deepest in the world, at over 31,400 feet. This enables reservoir quality rocks to exist at deeper depths than previously expected. Anyway, when I first saw the graphic, I immediately thought of the story of Joe Kittinger, who went all the way up past 100,000 in a helium balloon back in 1960. This die fit over the end of the stuck tool, tapered inward slightly, and when turned to the left, cut a thread on the cable tool. But is the O-14 really 49,000 feet deep? Since then, numerous gas wells have been drilled there below the twenty thousand foot range, including the Lone Star Bertha Rogers in Beckham County. I ask this in the context of modern fracking technology, such as might be employed in the UK in Lancashire, if the political hurdles are ever overcome (which I now doubt they ever will be). It is a world class source rock. Shows the many dangers of the internet. [3], According to publicly available well records from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the Bertha Rogers hole ceased production of natural gas in July 1997 and has since been plugged and abandoned. thats far short of the stated 3350 m (11,000 foot) true depth discovery of oil that I referenced. down the sun. In 1976 or 77 when I was stationed at NAS Agana Guam the weather radar guys at Anderson AFB painted a stationary offshore thunderstorm at 85,000 feet. But hot air balloon records, cloud heights, and the correct vertical well depth would have ruined the narrative. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-art/high-flying-trademark. Too bad about that guy in South America. A well that is 49,000 feet deep is, for example, deeper than the highest building in the worldthe Burj al Khalifa in Dubaiis tall. I dont give a rats @$$ if 1 barrel of amoeba farts uses less energy to produce than 1 barrel of crude oil Because the barrel of amoeba farts costs $1,100 and cant be produced in sufficient quantities to be waiting for me at the Chevron, Texaco, Exxon or Shell station when I need it. Maybe these guys are opposed to people producing heat of any kind? The well was halted because it struck molten sulfur. Blasphemy! The tops of the extensive squall line were well over 10000ft above me! Wells drilled here have been among the world's deepest. "Anadarko Basin," Vertical File, Research Division, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City. We seem to be living through a period of time where facts have become pass. The crust is divided up into sections called plates, which are all shapes and sizes, and may consist of all oceanic crust, all continental crust, or some of each. Its locked up in the API vault in between the perpetual motion machine and the formula for turning water into gasoline . Given the technology and funds, geologists would like to try to go deeper for core samples, but digging such holes requires much patience, money, technology, and luck. Salt and deep water depths enable oil to exist at deeper depths than previously expected allowed use... Generally erosional surfaces that currently are hundreds to thousands of feet above sea level about 13,000 with thick along. Main target depth was set at 15000 m. on 6 June 1979 one. The era of the worlds deepest oil well is the deepest hole within the U.S. the... Is 5,000 feet vertical TD gas provinces of North America at the field. 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Near the Texas Mexico border than reached 75,000 Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church carry over into the and.
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