Events in the Gulf of Mexico have brought home to us the hazards involved in deep water, offshore drilling. Yet it’s easy to forget that, all over the world are deep – sometimes miles deep – oil and gas wells performing perfectly efficiently. All the same, the pipes and flanges are regularly checked for signs of damage, and numerous sensors are installed to warn of possible geothermal trouble that might be brewing.

We know that deep drilling causes immense temperature and pressure stresses, as well as being a highly corrosive environment. This is why super duplex and similar high-strength alloys are widely used in deep water rig flanges.

Much of the information we have on the deep drilling environment comes from studies carried out at the Kola Borehole, in Russia. What’s been discovered has turned our dependable planet’s crust into a hostile, alien world.

Before the Kola hole was dug, researchers thought the crust was a benign series of rock interfaces. The heat and pressure started at the mantle, they thought. What they found instead was rock metamorphosed by heat and pressure so intense, it had forced out oxygen and hydrogen molecules to form water. Yet they also found intact fossil shells.

A little further, the rock turned to plastic, and the drill was so hot – way above the expected 100°C – that it had reached its tolerance. When it was withdrawn, the hole closed up. Yet the Earth’s crust had hardly been pricked.

The super duplex pipe flanges we supply at Chemipetro can stand up to most environments, although we’re not sure about changes to the laws of physics.