Vladimir Khomutko
Reading time: 4 minutes
A A
Where is the deepest oil well?
Man has long dreamed of not only flying into space, but also penetrating deep into home planet. For a long time this dream remained unrealizable, since existing technologies did not allow us to go any significantly deeper into the earth’s crust.
In the thirteenth century, the depth of the wells that the Chinese dug reached a fantastic 1,200 meters for that time, and starting in the thirties of the last century, with the advent of drilling rigs, people in Europe began to drill three-kilometer-long pits. However, all this, so to speak, was only shallow scratches on the earth's surface.
The idea is to drill the top the earth's shell V global project took shape in the 60s of the twentieth century. Before this, all assumptions about the structure earth's mantle were based on seismic activity data and other indirect factors. However the only way To look into the bowels of the Earth in the literal sense of the word, all that was left was to drill deep wells.
Hundreds of wells drilled for these purposes, both on land and in the ocean, have provided numerous data that help answer a lot of questions about the structure of our planet. However, now ultra-deep workings are pursued not only by scientific, but also purely practical purposes. Next, we look at the deepest wells ever drilled in the world.
This well, 8,553 meters deep, was drilled in 1977 in the area where the Vienna oil and gas province is located. Small ones were found in it oil fields, and the idea arose to look deeper. At a depth of 7,544 meters, experts found unrecoverable gas reserves, after which the well suddenly collapsed. The OMV company decided to drill a second one, but despite its great depth, the miners were unable to find any minerals.
Austrian well Zistersdorf
Federal Republic of Germany – Hauptbohrung
To organize this deep mining German specialists inspired by the famous Kola over deep well. In those days, many countries in Europe and the world began to develop their own deep drilling projects. Among them, the Hauptborung project stood out, which was implemented over four years - from 1990 to 1994 in Germany. Despite its relatively small depth (compared to the wells described below) - 9,101 meters, this project has become widely known worldwide due to open access to the obtained geological and drilling data.
United States of America – Baden Unit
A well with a depth of 9,159 meters was drilled American company Lone Star in the vicinity of the town of Anadarko (USA). Development began in 1970 and continued for 545 days. The cost of its construction was six million dollars, and in terms of materials, 150 diamond bits and 1,700 tons of cement were used.
USA – Bertha Rogers
This mine was also created in the state of Oklahoma in the area of the oil and gas province of Anadarko in Oklahoma. Work began in 1974 and lasted 502 days. The drilling was also carried out by the same company as in the previous example. Having passed 9,583 meters, the miners came across a deposit of molten sulfur and were forced to stop work.
This well in the Guinness Book of Records is called “the deepest intrusion into the Earth’s crust made by man.” In May 1970, in the vicinity of the lake with the hair-raising name Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi, the construction of this grandiose mine began. Initially we wanted to walk 15 kilometers, but due to too high temperatures we stopped at 12,262 meters. Currently, the Kola Superdeep Pipeline is mothballed.
Qatar – BD-04A
Drilled in an oil field called Al-Shaheen for the purpose of geological exploration.
The total depth was 12,289 meters, and the 12-kilometer mark was passed in just 36 days! It was seven years ago.
Russian Federation – OP-11
Since 2003, a whole series of ultra-deep drilling works began as part of the Sakhalin-1 project.
In 2011, Exxon Neftegas drilled the deepest oil well in the world - 12,245 meters - in just 60 days.
It happened at a field called Odoptu.
However, the records didn't end there.
O-14 is a production well that has no analogues in the world. total length trunk - 13,500 meters, as well as the longest horizontal well - 12,033 meters.
Its development was carried out by the Russian company NK Rosneft, part of the consortium of the Sakhalin-1 project. This well was developed in a field called Chayvo. The ultra-modern Orlan drilling platform was used to drill it.
We also note the depth along the shaft of the well constructed in 2013 as part of the same project under number Z-43, the value of which reached 12,450 meters. In the same year, this record was broken at the Chayvinskoye field - the length of the Z-42 shaft reached 12,700 meters, and the length of the horizontal section - 11,739 meters.
In 2014, the excavation of the Z-40 well (offshore Chayvo field) was completed, which until O-14 was the longest well in the world - 13,000 meters, and also had the longest horizontal section - 12,130 m.
In other words, to date, 8 of the 10 longest wells in the world are located in the fields of the Sakhalin-1 project.
Kola ultra-deep well
The field, called Chayvo, is one of three being developed by the consortium on Sakhalin. It is located in the northeast of the coast of Sakhalin Island. The depth of the seabed in this area varies from 14 to 30 m. The field was put into operation back in 2005.
In general, the international shelf project Sakhalin-1 unites the interests of several large global corporations. It includes three fields located on the offshore shelf Odoptu, Chayvo and Arkutun-Dagi. According to experts, the total available hydrocarbon reserves here are about 236 million tons of oil and almost 487 billion cubic meters natural gas. The Chaivo field was put into operation (as we said above) in 2005, the Odoptu field in 2010, and at the very beginning of 2015 the development of the Arkutun-Dagi field began.
Over the entire existence of the project, it was possible to produce about 70 million tons of oil and 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Currently, the project has encountered some difficulties associated with fluctuations in oil prices, but members of the consortium have confirmed their interest in further work.
Today, the scientific research of mankind has reached the boundaries of the solar system: we have planted spacecraft to planets, their satellites, asteroids, comets, sent missions to the Kuiper belt and crossed the heliopause boundary. With the help of telescopes, we see events that took place 13 billion years ago - when the Universe was only a few hundred million years old. Against this background, it is interesting to evaluate how well we know our Earth. The best way to find out its internal structure - drill a well: the deeper, the better. The deepest well on Earth is the Kola Superdeep Well, or SG-3. In 1990, its depth reached 12 kilometers 262 meters. If we compare this figure with the radius of our planet, it turns out that this is only 0.2 percent of the way to the center of the Earth. But even this was enough to change ideas about the structure earth's crust.
If you imagine a well as a shaft through which you can descend by elevator into the very depths of the earth, or at least a couple of kilometers, then this is not at all the case. The diameter of the drilling tool with which engineers created the well was only 21.4 centimeters. The upper two-kilometer section of the well is a little wider - it was expanded to 39.4 centimeters, but still there is no way for a person to get there. To imagine the proportions of the well, the best analogy would be a 57-meter sewing needle with a diameter of 1 millimeter, slightly thicker at one end.
Well diagram
But this representation will also be simplified. During drilling, several accidents occurred at the well - part of the drill string ended up underground without the ability to extract it. Therefore, the well was started anew several times, from marks of seven and nine kilometers. There are four large branches and about a dozen small ones. The main branches have different maximum depths: two of them cross the 12-kilometer mark, two more do not reach it by only 200-400 meters. Note that the depth of the Mariana Trench is one kilometer less - 10,994 meters relative to sea level.
Horizontal (left) and vertical projections of SG-3 trajectories
Yu.N. Yakovlev et al. / Bulletin of Kola scientific center RAS, 2014
Moreover, it would be a mistake to perceive the well as a plumb line. Due to the fact that different depths rocks have different mechanical properties, the drill deviated to less dense areas during work. Therefore, on a large scale, the profile of the Kola Superdeep looks like a slightly curved wire with several branches.
Approaching the well today, we will only see top part- a metal hatch screwed to the mouth with twelve massive bolts. The inscription on it was made with an error, the correct depth is 12,262 meters.
How was a super-deep well drilled?
To begin with, it should be noted that the SG-3 was originally conceived specifically for scientific purposes. The researchers chose for drilling a place where ancient rocks - up to three billion years old - came to the surface of the earth. One of the arguments during exploration was that young sedimentary rocks were well studied during oil production, and no one had ever drilled deep into ancient layers. In addition, there were large copper-nickel deposits here, the exploration of which would be useful addition to the scientific mission of the well.
Drilling began in 1970. The first part of the well was drilled with a serial Uralmash-4E rig - it was usually used for drilling oil wells. Modification of the installation made it possible to reach a depth of 7 kilometers 263 meters. It took four years. Then the installation was changed to Uralmash-15000, named after the planned depth of the well - 15 kilometers. The new drilling rig was designed specifically for the Kola superdeep: drilling at such great depths required serious modification of equipment and materials. For example, the weight of the drill string alone at a depth of 15 kilometers reached 200 tons. The installation itself could lift loads of up to 400 tons.
The drill string consists of pipes connected to each other. With its help, engineers lower the drilling tool to the bottom of the well, and it also ensures its operation. At the end of the column, special 46-meter turbodrills were installed, driven by the flow of water from the surface. They made it possible to rotate the rock crushing tool separately from the entire column.
The bits with which the drill string bit into the granite evoke futuristic parts from a robot - several rotating spiked disks connected to a turbine on top. One such bit was enough for only four hours of work - this approximately corresponds to a passage of 7-10 meters, after which the entire drill string must be lifted, disassembled and then lowered again. Constant descents and the climbs themselves took up to 8 hours.
Even the pipes for the column in the Kola Superdeep Pipe had to be used in unusual ways. At depth, temperature and pressure gradually increase, and, as engineers say, at temperatures above 150-160 degrees, the steel of serial pipes softens and is less able to withstand multi-ton loads - because of this, the likelihood of dangerous deformations and column breakage increases. Therefore, the developers chose lighter and heat-resistant aluminum alloys. Each of the pipes had a length of about 33 meters and a diameter of about 20 centimeters - slightly narrower than the well itself.
However, even specially developed materials could not withstand drilling conditions. After the first seven-kilometer section, further drilling to the 12,000-meter mark took almost ten years and more than 50 kilometers of pipes. Engineers were faced with the fact that below seven kilometers the rocks became less dense and fractured - viscous for the drill. In addition, the wellbore itself distorted its shape and became elliptical. As a result, the column broke several times, and, unable to lift it back, the engineers were forced to concrete the branch of the well and drill the shaft again, losing years of work.
One of these major accidents forced drillers in 1984 to concrete a branch of the well, which reached a depth of 12,066 meters. Drilling had to start again from the 7-kilometer mark. This was preceded by a pause in work with the well - at that moment the existence of SG-3 was declassified, and the international geological congress Geoexpo was held in Moscow, whose delegates visited the site.
According to eyewitnesses of the accident, after work resumed, the column drilled a hole another nine meters down. After four hours of drilling, the workers prepared to lift the column back, but it “didn’t work.” The drillers decided that the pipe was “stuck” somewhere to the walls of the well, and increased the lifting power. The load has decreased sharply. Gradually dismantling the column into 33-meter candles, the workers reached the next section, ending with an uneven lower edge: the turbo drill and another five kilometers of pipes remained in the well; they could not be lifted.
The drillers managed to reach the 12-kilometer mark again only in 1990, at which time the diving record was set - 12,262 meters. Then a new accident occurred, and since 1994, work on the well was stopped.
Superdeep Scientific Mission
Picture of seismic tests at SG-3
“Kola Superdeep” Ministry of Geology of the USSR, Nedra Publishing House, 1984
The well was studied using a whole range of geological and geophysical methods, ranging from core collection (a column of rocks corresponding to given depths) to radiation and seismological measurements. For example, the core was taken using core receivers with special drills - they look like pipes with jagged edges. In the center of these pipes there are 6-7 centimeter holes where the rock falls.
But even with this seemingly simple (except for the need to lift this core from many kilometers deep) difficulties arose. Because of the drilling fluid, the same one that set the drill in motion, the core became saturated with liquid and changed its properties. In addition, conditions in the depths and on the surface of the earth are very different - the samples cracked due to pressure changes.
At different depths, the core yield varied greatly. If at five kilometers from a 100-meter segment one could count on 30 centimeters of core, then at depths of more than nine kilometers, instead of a rock column, geologists received a set of washers made of dense rock.
Microphotograph of rocks recovered from a depth of 8028 meters
“Kola Superdeep” Ministry of Geology of the USSR, Nedra Publishing House, 1984
Studies of the material recovered from the well have made it possible to make several important conclusions. Firstly, the structure of the earth's crust cannot be simplified to a composition of several layers. This was previously indicated by seismological data - geophysicists saw waves that seemed to be reflected from a smooth boundary. Studies on SG-3 have shown that such visibility can also occur when complex distribution breeds
This assumption affected the design of the well - scientists expected that at a depth of seven kilometers the shaft would enter basalt rocks, but they did not meet even at the 12-kilometer mark. But instead of basalt, geologists discovered rocks that had a large number cracks and low density, which could not be expected at all from a depth of many kilometers. Moreover, there were traces in the cracks groundwater- there were even suggestions that they were formed by a direct reaction of oxygen and hydrogen in the thickness of the Earth.
Among scientific results applied ones were also found - for example, at shallow depths, geologists found a horizon of copper-nickel ores suitable for mining. And at a depth of 9.5 kilometers, a layer of geochemical gold anomaly was discovered - micrometer-sized grains of native gold were present in the rock. Concentrations reached up to a gram per ton of rock. However, it is unlikely that mining from such depths will ever be profitable. But the very existence and properties of the gold-bearing layer made it possible to clarify the models of mineral evolution - petrogenesis.
Separately, we should talk about studies of temperature gradients and radiation. For this kind of experiments, downhole instruments are used, lowered on wire ropes. Big problem was to ensure their synchronization with ground-based equipment, as well as to ensure operation at great depths. For example, difficulties arose with the fact that the cables, with a length of 12 kilometers, stretched by about 20 meters, which could greatly reduce the accuracy of the data. To avoid this, geophysicists had to create new methods for marking distances.
Most commercial instruments were not designed to operate in the harsh conditions of the lower levels of the well. Therefore, for research at great depths, scientists used equipment developed specifically for the Kola Superdeep.
The most important result of geothermal research is much higher temperature gradients than expected. Near the surface, the rate of temperature increase was 11 degrees per kilometer, to a depth of two kilometers - 14 degrees per kilometer. In the interval from 2.2 to 7.5 kilometers, the temperature increased at a rate approaching 24 degrees per kilometer, although existing models predicted a value one and a half times smaller. As a result, already at a depth of five kilometers, the instruments recorded a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, and by 12 kilometers this value reached 220 degrees Celsius.
The Kola superdeep well turned out to be unlike other wells - for example, when analyzing the heat release of rocks of the Ukrainian crystalline shield and Sierra Nevada batholiths, geologists showed that heat release decreases with depth. In SG-3, on the contrary, it grew. Moreover, measurements have shown that the main source of heat, providing 45-55 percent of the heat flow, is the decay of radioactive elements.
Despite the fact that the depth of the well seems colossal, it does not reach even a third of the thickness of the earth’s crust in the Baltic Shield. Geologists estimate that the base of the earth's crust in this area runs approximately 40 kilometers underground. Therefore, even if SG-3 reached the planned 15-kilometer cutoff, we still would not have reached the mantle.
This is the ambitious task that American scientists set for themselves when developing the Mohol project. Geologists planned to reach the border of Mohorovicic - an underground area where abrupt change propagation speed sound waves. It is believed to be associated with the boundary between the crust and the mantle. It is worth noting that the drillers chose the ocean floor near the island of Guadalupe as the location for the well - the distance to the border was only a few kilometers. However, the depth of the ocean itself reached 3.5 kilometers here, which significantly complicated drilling operations. The first tests in the 1960s allowed geologists to drill wells only to 183 meters.
Recently it became known about plans to resurrect the deep ocean drilling project with the help of the research drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution. Geologists chose a point at Indian Ocean, near Africa. The depth of the Mohorovicic boundary there is only about 2.5 kilometers. In December 2015 - January 2016, geologists managed to drill a well 789 meters deep - the fifth largest underwater well in the world. But this value is only half of what was required at the first stage. However, the team plans to return and finish what they started.
***
0.2 percent of the path to the center of the Earth is not such an impressive value compared to the scale space travel. However, it should be taken into account that the border of the Solar system does not pass along the orbit of Neptune (or even the Kuiper belt). The Sun's gravity prevails over stellar gravity up to distances of two light years from the star. So if you carefully calculate everything, it turns out that Voyager 2 flew only a tenth of a percent of the path to the outskirts of our system.
Therefore, we should not be upset by how poorly we know the “insides” of our own planet. Geologists have their own telescopes - seismic research - and their own ambitious plans to conquer the subsoil. And if astronomers have already managed to touch a solid part celestial bodies V solar system, then for geologists the most interesting things are still ahead.
Vladimir Korolev
At a depth of 410-660 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, there is an ocean of the Archean period. Such discoveries would not have been possible without the ultra-deep drilling methods developed and used in the Soviet Union. One of the artifacts of those times is the Kola superdeep well (SG-3), which even 24 years after the cessation of drilling remains the deepest in the world. Why it was drilled and what discoveries it helped make, says Lenta.ru.
Pioneers ultra-deep drilling The Americans spoke. True, in the vastness of the ocean: in the pilot project they used the Glomar Challenger vessel, designed precisely for these purposes. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was actively developing an appropriate theoretical framework.
In May 1970 in the north Murmansk region 10 kilometers from the city of Zapolyarny, drilling of the Kola superdeep well began. As expected, this was timed to coincide with the centenary of Lenin’s birth. Unlike other ultra-deep wells, SG-3 was drilled exclusively for scientific purposes and even organized a special geological exploration expedition.
The drilling location chosen was unique: it is on the Baltic Shield in the Kola Peninsula area that ancient rocks come to the surface. The age of many of them reaches three billion years (our planet itself is 4.5 billion years old). In addition, there is the Pechenga-Imandra-Varzuga rift trough - a bowl-like structure pressed into ancient rocks, the origin of which is explained deep fault.
It took scientists four years to drill a well to a depth of 7263 meters. So far, nothing unusual has been done: the same installation was used as for oil and gas production. Then the well stood idle for a whole year: the installation was modified for turbine drilling. After the upgrade, it was possible to drill approximately 60 meters per month.
The depth of seven kilometers brought surprises: alternation of hard and not very dense rocks. Accidents became more frequent, and many cavities appeared in the wellbore. Drilling continued until 1983, when the depth of SG-3 reached 12 kilometers. After this, the scientists gathered a large conference and talked about their successes.
However, due to careless handling of the drill, a five-kilometer-long section remained in the mine. They tried to get her for several months, but were unsuccessful. It was decided to start drilling again from a depth of seven kilometers. Due to the complexity of the operation, not only the main trunk was drilled, but also four additional ones. It took six years to restore the lost meters: in 1990, the well reached a depth of 12,262 meters, becoming the deepest in the world.
Two years later, drilling was stopped, the well was subsequently mothballed, and in fact abandoned.
Nevertheless, many discoveries were made at the Kola superdeep well. Engineers have created an entire system of ultra-deep drilling. The difficulty lay not only in depth, but also in high temperatures(up to 200 degrees Celsius) due to the intensity of the drills.
Scientists not only moved deeper into the Earth, but also lifted rock samples and cores for analysis. By the way, they were the ones who studied lunar soil and found that its composition almost completely corresponds to the rocks extracted from the Kola well from a depth of about three kilometers.
At a depth of over nine kilometers they came across deposits of minerals, including gold: in the olivine layer there is as much as 78 grams per ton. And this is not so little - gold mining is considered possible at 34 grams per ton. A pleasant surprise for scientists, as well as for the nearby plant, was the discovery of a new ore horizon of copper-nickel ores.
Among other things, the researchers learned that granites do not transform into a super-strong basalt layer: in fact, behind it were Archean gneisses, which are traditionally classified as fractured rocks. This produced a kind of revolution in geological and geophysical science and completely changed traditional ideas about the interior of the Earth.
Another pleasant surprise is the discovery at a depth of 9-12 kilometers of highly porous fractured rocks, saturated with highly mineralized waters. According to scientists, they are responsible for the formation of ores, but previously it was believed that this occurs only at much shallower depths.
Among other things, it turned out that the temperature of the subsoil was slightly higher than expected: at a depth of six kilometers, a temperature gradient of 20 degrees Celsius per kilometer was obtained instead of the 16 expected. The radiogenic origin of the heat flow was established, which also did not agree with previous hypotheses.
In deep layers more than 2.8 billion years old, scientists have found 14 species of fossilized microorganisms. This made it possible to shift the time of the emergence of life on the planet one and a half billion years ago. The researchers also found that at depths there are no sedimentary rocks and there is methane, forever burying the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons.
In the second half of the 20th century, the world became sick with ultra-deep drilling. Cooked in the USA new program studying the ocean floor (Deep Sea Drilling Project). The Glomar Challenger vessel, built specifically for this project, spent several years in the waters of various oceans and seas, drilling almost 800 wells in their bottoms, reaching maximum depth 760 m. By the mid-1980s, the results of offshore drilling confirmed the theory of plate tectonics. Geology as a science was born again. Meanwhile, Russia went its own way. Interest in the problem, awakened by the successes of the United States, resulted in the program “Study of the Earth's interior and ultra-deep drilling,” but not in the ocean, but on the continent. Despite its centuries-old history, continental drilling seemed to be a completely new matter. After all, we were talking about previously unattainable depths - more than 7 kilometers. In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev approved this program, although he was guided more by political motives than by scientific ones. He did not want to fall behind the United States.
The newly created laboratory at the Institute of Drilling Technology was headed by the famous oil worker, Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolai Timofeev. He was tasked with justifying the possibility of ultra-deep drilling in crystalline rocks - granites and gneisses. The research took 4 years, and in 1966 the experts made a verdict - it is possible to drill, and not necessarily with technology tomorrow, the equipment that already exists is sufficient. Main problem- heat at depth. According to calculations, as it penetrates into the rocks that make up the earth's crust, the temperature should increase by 1 degree every 33 meters. This means that at a depth of 10 km we should expect about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C. Drilling tools and instruments will not withstand such heat. It was necessary to look for a place where the depths are not so hot...
Such a place was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. A report prepared at the Institute of Physics of the Earth stated: over the billions of years of its existence, the Kola Shield has cooled, the temperature at a depth of 15 km does not exceed 150 ° C. And geophysicists have prepared an approximate section of the subsoil of the Kola Peninsula. According to them, the first 7 kilometers are granite strata of the upper part of the earth’s crust, then the basalt layer begins. At that time, the idea of a two-layer structure of the earth's crust was generally accepted. But as it turned out later, both physicists and geophysicists were wrong. The drilling site was chosen at the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi. In Finnish it means “Under the Wolf Mountain,” although there are neither mountains nor wolves in that place. Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.
But
Here you can listen to the hellish sounds from the well.
Film: Kola Superdeep: The Last Fireworks
The oil company (OC) Rosneft, as part of the consortium of the Sakhalin-1 project, has successfully completed drilling the longest well in the world at the Chayvo field, the company’s information policy department reported.
Production well O-14 has the world's largest bore depth - 13,500 meters and a horizontal section of the bore with a length of 12,033 meters. It was drilled towards the extreme south-eastern end of the field from the Orlan drilling platform.
“This well is a continuation successful implementation our outstanding project. I express my gratitude to our partners – ExxonMobil, thanks to the use of whose drilling technologies this achievement became possible,” said the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin.
During the implementation of the Sakhalin-1 project since 2003, several world records have already been set for drilling long-reach wells. For example, in January 2011, an oil well in the Odoptu-Sea field, drilled under acute angle to the surface of the earth, with a length of 12,345 meters, it became the longest well in the world.
In April 2013, well Z-43 was drilled, the depth of which was 12,450 meters, and in June of the same year, the world record was broken again at the Chayvinskoye field: the depth of well Z-42 was 12,700 meters, plus a horizontal section at 11,739 meters.
In April 2014, the Sakhalin-1 project team completed drilling the Z-40 well on the Chayvo shelf field, which, before the appearance of the O-14 well, had the world's largest wellbore depth of 13,000 meters and a horizontal section depth of 12 130 meters.
Today, taking into account the new record deep well, the Sakhalin-1 consortium has drilled 9 of the 10 longest wells in the world.
Successful application advanced drilling technologies make it possible to reduce costs for the construction of additional offshore structures, pipelines and other elements of field infrastructure.
In addition, by reducing the area of drilling and production sites, the advanced drilling technologies used by Rosneft help protect environment.
The Kola superdeep well, planted in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth in 1970, remains the deepest vertical well in the world drilled on land. Its depth is 12,262 meters.
The Chayvo field is one of three fields of the Sakhalin-1 project. Located northeast of the coast of Sakhalin. The sea depth varies from 14 to 30 m; at the installation site of the Orlan platform with drilling and accommodation modules, the sea depth is 15 m, the distance to the shore is 5 km (near boundary) and 15 km (far boundary). The field was put into operation in 2005.
Installation of the Orlan platform was completed in July 2005, and drilling operations began in December 2005. The platform has a minimum of facilities for product preparation, since all produced products are supplied to the Chayvo onshore processing complex. The steel-concrete structure on which the drilling and accommodation modules are located is used to develop the southwestern and southeastern parts of the Chayvo field. The steel-concrete base of the Orlan easily withstands the onslaught of ice and giant hummocks reaching the height of a six-story building.
Sakhalin-1 is the first large-scale offshore project carried out in Russian Federation under the terms of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) concluded in 1996. Shares of project participants: NK Rosneft - 20%, ExxonMobil - 30%, SODECO - 30%, ONGC Videsh Ltd - 20%.
The Sakhalin-1 project includes the development of three offshore fields: Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi, located on the north-eastern shelf of Sakhalin Island. The total recoverable reserves under the project are 236 million tons of oil and 487 billion cubic meters of gas. The first Chaivo field was put into operation in 2005, the Odoptu field in 2010, and the Arkutun-Dagi field in January 2015. Since the start of the project, 70 million tons of oil have been produced, and 16 billion cubic meters of gas have been produced and sold.
