In the 1980s, it was just over six miles deep, 31,911 feet, to be exact. This was a drill hole made on the Kola Peninsula in Russia by workers looking for oil.
This hole is 2,909 feet deeper than Mount Everest is high. The Russians are not alone in going to such depths to get oil. During the 1970s, two holes were drilled in Oklahoma, each over 30,000 feet deep.
Why do we dig so deep to find oil when coal lies so close to the surface of the earth? Products made from oil, such as gasoline and kerosene, are very efficient sources of energy.
If you were to burn equal weights of gasoline and the very finest anthracite coal, the gasoline would produce 50 percent more heat. It would produce 800 percent more heat than an equal weight of the soft coal that makes up most of the world’s supply.
When drilling for oil, natural gas is often found, and this is the most efficient of all the fuels found in the earth. It will produce almost twice the heat of anthracite coal and almost ten times the heat of soft coal.
The Deepest Hole in the world today is still the Kola well at the Kola Institute, on the Kola Peninsula, near the Norwegian border. The Russians drilling the Kola well since 1970 and have reached a crust depth of 40,226 feet, a record that’s never been broken.
