Drilling to start this month for Iceland Deep Drilling Project
Drilling Rig Thor of Iceland Drilling (source: Iceland Drilling)
Alexander Richter
10 Aug 2016
Drilling for Iceland's deepest and hottest geothermal well will start this month by contractor Iceland Drilling near the Reykjanes geothermal plant by HS Orka.
As part of its announcement of the results for the second quarter of 2016, Alterra Power reports on its geothermal activities in Iceland.
Alterra Power (formerly Magma Energy) owns a majority stake in the only private energy company in Iceland, HS Orka. Having reported on the deep drilling project before , the last major contract – so the announcement – was signed for the planned well of 5,000 meter depth near the Reykjanes plant in Iceland.
The drilling rig has been deployed to the site and drilling will commence this month.
The kick off meeting for the IDDP-2 project, a joint effort of the IDDP-Consortium and DEEPEGS, was held in the end of June this year.
Completing the well to 5000 m is estimated to take about 150 days and of this time approximately 30 days are assigned for 10 m coring runs (Figure 2). The available funding should allow 20-25 core runs to be attempted using equipment, techniques, and personnel that have already cored successfully in geothermal wells at Reykjanes. The well will be deviated 16o SW with a kick-off point at 2750 m to intersect the deep target zone.
“Conventional down-hole motors and gyros will be used from the kickoff point to 3150 m. Then high-temperature down-hole directional drilling equipment recently developed by Baker Hughes will also be employed. Lithological logging of drill cuttings samples taken at 2 m intervals will be carried out by ISOR and both cores and cuttings will be scanned and the core descriptions and lithological logs will be entered into an ICDP Drilling Information System (DIS) to disseminate the data expeditiously.”
The drilling contract with Iceland Drilling was signed in April this year. For the project the drilling rig Thor will be used, which has previously engaged in Iceland at the Hellisheidi geothermal site in Iceland.
Source: Alterra Power, IDDP, Visir.is
