March 21, 2009
All,
News of today:
- Today we penetrated 148 m, good progress since yesterday ... but that ´s it, for the moment, since the pipe was twisted off at the lower end of the casing. The day shift employed a fishing tool, trying to recover the lower pipe string stuck in the sediment. This attempt failed, possibly due to slight movements of the casing in consequence of flexibility in the large ice hole that meanwhile has been formed and/or slight movements of the ice pad, indicated by the EBA free board measurements. So, we lost about 140 m of pipe as well as the bottom hole assembly (BHA) and the EXN that was in operation when the twisting happened. This is really sad, since we had just left the sandy horizons and were recovering more than 20 m of nice stiff mud.
- We decided to start the second hole and repeat the coring of the upper sediment column (which was anyhow planned) before we penetrate deeper horizons. The advantage of the flexibility of the casing mentioned above could be that we do NOT have to move the platform for the second hole but drill close to first hole with a minimal angle (that can be corrected later) - the night shift is just trying that. So, if this turns out to be successful, we have saved 5-7 days for the platform movement and in about the same time we might have reached or even penetrated the 148 m cored so far. Well, this at present is only a hope, which, however, keeps motivation and optimisms high ...
Looking forward to more positive news soon,
cheers for now,
Martin
