The process of drilling

If I just lift this piece of steel up here, this is a piece from the Cape Roberts drilling project. And so this is from the late 90’s, and Cape Roberts is a place in Antarctica, not far from where we are going to go in mid November. Now you will notice the ends are quite jagged, and this is because this is the top of the casing. And this happens in Antarctica nowadays, when you leave somewhere, when you do this drilling you have got to clean up all your rubbish, all your oil, all your human waste, everything has to come back. So you have to leave the place clean and tidy. Now this particular piece, went the other way round, the top would have been at the bottom, and what we’ve got is the casing that went from the sea ice down to the bottom of the sea. Now when you leave, the way in which you retrieve this, is you have to cut it off with explosives. Now this will be done with the ANDRILL project, this casing. The explosives are put in, and it cuts the steel so that you can retrieve everything above the level of the sea. To give you some idea of how difficult that is, you can’t take explosives to Antarctica normally, under the Antarctic Treaty, it’s a military free zone, so special permission for explosives. Around about 3000 dollars to actually have one explosive that will cut this in Andrill this year. But round about 10 times that cost to actually get it from Germany to Antarctica. And that’s because it’s so difficult to ship explosives these days. It’s not the sort of thing that is a wise idea to put in your hand carry when you go on an international flight these days. So what looks like a rusty old piece of steel is quite dramatic.

Now this is a drill bit from Cape Roberts, and where Jared has got his fingers it’s hollow and that is where the drilling fluid would have been pumped into the drill bit. Run your finger round the top for me Jared. All of that is covered in diamonds, industrial diamonds that cut the rock, and the little wee grooves…..can you point that out, the little grooves around the outside, that’s where the fluid would lubricate the diamonds, and then the drilling fluid moves up through the outside. Half way down, now just where Jarred has got his hand you can see some sloping lines, that is another set of diamonds that will actually enlarge the hole. Now in front of Travis is another section of drill core and we’ve got two sections here. Two were used at Cape Roberts, and three will be used on the Andrill Project, and you can see that as you get deeper you’ve actually got a smaller diameter drill core. And once again a drill bit at the end. And here in front of me I’ve got some drill core. Now these are not from Antarctica, these are from New Zealand. And this drill core, this is what it comes out like and on the ANDRILL project it will come out in three metre lengths. It will be cut into one metre lengths so it’s easy to handle.

The last section of core, as it comes out of the drill hole, I’ll just give you an example of how important it is to catalogue it, and keep it in order. The worst thing you can do is mix it up. Here’s an example of some remains of fossils, trace fossils they’re called. The animal has actually gone, there is no trace of that, but where it lived is left behind. Now this is round about 40 million years old and there was a shrimp like animal living in the rock, making tunnels. And the mucous that used to keep the tunnels open appears as a dark line, so quite big shrimps. If you bring it out of the drill core, if you bring it up and you mix it up, this is what will happen. In this story as you read it from left to right as you do with drill core, here we have got shrimp like animals living in the sand, and here we don’t. Mix then up and you completely change the history and the story. So very important that drill core is catalogued and comes out of the ground, and is looked after accurately.