As we approach 200m, beautiful fresh layered gabbro is present in the core. After coring meta-gabbro over a long interval, we are happy to see some real igneous rock. Exciting! It seams that the location chosen for GT2 was a good coring point to drill thetransition from upper to layered gabbro. (Credits: The OmanDP team)
We received more than 20m of NQ core today, making good drilling progress. It was also the first intense coring day after the science crew was almost completely exchanged during the last days. (Credits: Samuel Mueller)
We had a special guest creating arial footage of the drill site GT1 and GT2. The change from HQ to NQ is still complicated and slowing down the drilling progress. (Credits: The pilot)
Only a small amount of coring today as we withdrew the HQ bit, replaced with a HQ liner and casing shoe to improve drilling fluid circulation and the clearing of cuttings. Tomorrow we should continue coring with a NQ bit.
Happy New Year from the Oman Drilling Project! We started 2017 off with a new record, core 48 was recovered 11:20 and included a single piece of core that was 2.3m long! A new OmanDP record and a spectacular feat from our drillers. Our progress in GT2 continues and we are now at 137 m, the cores are showing less deformation and more small scale intrusions.
The final day of 2016 we passed the 100 m milestone in Hole GT2A, only 300 m more to go! The cores continue to come out fast and furious with ~3m of core every hour, the onsite team are kept on their toes. The cores continue to show complex hydrothermal alteration and deformation relationships.
Our excellent core recovery continues with some spectacular alteration and deformation in the foliated gabbros. We are now over 90 m into GT2A and are now starting to observe some changes in the alteration and the cores have more small scale leucocratic intrusions.
Today we continued coring operations in Hole GT2A, ending the day at 80.4 m. We were also pleased to welcome some of our project colleagues from Japan to the site and show off the excellent gabbro cores we have been busy receiving over the last few days.
Today we made excellent progress and advanced the borehole down to 53.4 m. High core recovery continued with several pieces >1m in length, including the amazing 1.85m piece!
Today we made excellent progress advancing down to 29.4 m with 6 cores all with high recovery. The cores were variably altered foliated gabbros, with some spectacular hydrothermal intervals.
Most of day was spent addressing a loss of circulation and the installation of 6 m of casing, followed by 3 short cores that were highly fractured and altered.
Merry Christmas from the Oman Drilling Project onsite team! Our perfect present arrived mid afternoon with our first core from Site GT2 middle lower crust. We recovered 5 cores in total and the onsite team are busy implementing our core flow plan, so far so good!
We are delghted that today our drill rig arrived onsite, along with all the other equipment. Our site has transformed and we are all ready and excited for our first core for the Oman Drilling Project!