News

Iceland Deep Drilling Projects hits magma at 2,104 meters

Alexander Richter 30 Jun 2009

Drilling of the first IDDP well at Krafla, Iceland, continued in March this year, yesterday, encountered molten rock at 2104 m depth. The drillstring got stuck but circulation of cold water through the drillstring has been maintained.

Already last week, but I just find time to post this now. According to news by the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) consortium, the “Drilling of the first IDDP well at Krafla, Iceland, continued in March this year, yesterday, encountered molten rock at 2104 m depth. The drillstring got stuck but circulation of cold water through the drillstring has been maintained. Today, the drillstring is being pulled out and the situation is under full control. Similar incidents of drilling into magma have been met in another well at Krafla, and also in Hawaii. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) team will study the situation in detail during the next few days and then decide on the continuation of the project.

The aim of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is to drill into geothermal resources at supercritical conditions, i.e. extremely high temperatures and pressure assumed to exist below 3.5 km depth at Krafla. The drilling of this well sofar has been funded by Landsvirkjun and Alcoa, and the intention was to continue drilling to 3.5 km depth before the IDDP program would take over the well and deepen it to 4.5 km. Evidently, this unexpected incident of hitting magma at only 2.1 km depth may affect the IDDP program
at Krafla, but a thorough study of the situation will be undertaken. Potentially, this situation might enable a serious test of so-called engineered geothermal systems (EGS), where cold water is pumped into a neighboring well to be retrieved in the IDDP well as superheated steam. Further information of the IDDP drilling will be revealed at www.iddp.is and at www.icdp-online.org.

“This is only the third time that magma has ever flowed into a geothermal drill hole, as far as we know,” said Peter Schiffman, a geology professor at UC Davis and member of the international team conducting the study. “A research project in Hawaii hit magma in 2005, and in 1977 magma erupted out the top of a producing geothermal well not far from our site in Krafla, Iceland.”

In Hawaii, drilling stopped. And Schiffman is doubtful that this project (IDDP) can continue. But if the magma body is narrow — as he and the research team expect it is — it may be possible to bore through it or around it, he said. “We’ve been able to keep circulation of cold water through the drill string, so our equipment is still functional.”

The team had originally planned to drill to 11,500 feet, or almost 2.2 miles into the earth.”

Source: News UC Davis, IDDP news release