The rotary drilling operations have come to an end. We are packing up our stuff at BA2, and tomorrow we'll go back to BA1 in the morning to finish clearing the site and do the same the afternoon at BA2.
Today we drilled a record-bearing 101m at BA2. We are now 342m deep and should finish the drilling tomorrow, with maybe a last minute water strike…who knows.
92m drilled today at BA2, bringing us to a drill depth of 150m. So far the rock appears homogeneous with little variations in alteration. What are the last 250m reserving for us? (Credit: Team OmanDP)
The first rotary well has been successfully drilled to 400 m and we are only 7m away from completing GT3, our third diamond cored well. Mobilisation of both rigs will take place over the next few days.
We were able to take advantage of a break in drilling while the old drillbit was changed to a brand new one, giving us time to describe all the complex intrusive relationships in the cores that were drilled today.
First bit of NQ core on deck this morning at 9:50, after a thorough cleaning of the borehole bottom to clear it of the rubble and mud that have fallen during the exchange of drill pipes.
We are currently changing the pipes from HQ to NQ size at GT3. And the drilling at BA1 is underway and doing great, we are already at 40m and have struck groundwater level.
The GT3 OmanDP Team says farewell to Salim and Saif from the Public Authority of Mining, as well as to Jurgen Koepke from Hannover. We also say goodbye to our HQ cores, as we are now entering the NQ drilling stage.
We welcomed Tony Morris and Chris MacLeod to the site. They were greeted by a 2.75m core, that was also a nice departure present for Johan, Lyderic, Emma and Marine. We are now entering a zone of hard rock and drilling has slowed down, the system of a down.
The rotary drilling site is up. Located in the peridotites above Batin, the exploratory borehole BA1 will help us to have a better idea of what lies beneath the surface in order to choose the site where the core drilling will take place during phase II.