HR: 0800h
AN: V31B-1429    [Abstracts]
TI: The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), a 5 km Deep Drillhole on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the Icelandic Hotspot.
AU: * Elders, W A
EM: wilfred.elders@ucr.edu
AF: University of California, Riverside,, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 United States
AU: Fridleifsson, G O
EM: gof@isor.is
AF: ISOR, Iceland Geosurvey,, Orkurgardur, Grensasvegi 9,, Reykjavik, 108 Iceland
AB: Beginning in January 2004 one of the major energy companies in Iceland will drill and flow test a 2.7 km deep geothermal well situated on the Reykjanes Peninsula at the southwest tip of Iceland, where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge emerges from the ocean. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) proposes to take over this well in 2006 and deepen it to 3.7 km and carry out a second flow test at that depth. In 2007, after evaluation of the technical and scientific results from this 3.7 km deep well, and subject to funding negotiations now underway, the IDDP will continuously core the well to 5 km depth, where a third flow test will be carried out. A consortium of the three major energy companies in Iceland conceived the IDDP to investigate the deeper levels of hydrothermal systems. Their aim is to determine if utilizing supercritical hydrothermal fluids would improve the economics of power production from existing high-temperature geothermal fields. This will require drilling a series of wells $>$ 4 km deep, to reach temperatures $>$ 450øC over the next decade. Such deep hot wells present both technical challenges and opportunities for important scientific studies. The IDDP has therefore welcomed participation by the international scientific community and with funding from the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) two international workshops have been held, resulting in a science program involving investigators from $>$ 17 different countries. This first IDDP well will allow sampling fluids from 2.5 km, 3.7 km and 5.0 km and produce $>$ 1.3 km of core from a high-temperature hydrothermal system located in an ophiolite-like environment that is actively forming today. The well at Reykjanes is at a superb location for scientific investigations of the deeper levels of a hydrothermal system similar to black smokers, investigations of a high enthalpy geothermal resource and the coupling of magmatic and hydrothermal systems. These investigations will be a very important contribution to global science and have clear connections to the studies of ridge-hotspot interactions by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. Indeed Iceland could be considered as a Mission Specific Platform for such studies.
UR: http://www.iddp.is
DE: 8424 Hydrothermal systems (8135)
DE: 8135 Hydrothermal systems (8424)
SC: Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology [V]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting