Exploration Drilling

Exploration drilling is a procedure in which several test holes are perforated in order to evaluate the soil content in a particular area. It was conducted to find out whether the valuable materials are present, and to evaluate the quality of these materials. There are a number of industries that use drilling exploration in their work, sometimes with their own drilling crews, and sometimes through companies offering hire of drilling services.

A common reason for drilling exploration to do is in mining prospecting. Once a potential site is identified, drilling exploration can be used to determine whether the site has material of interest ranging from metallic minerals to diamonds, and to evaluate the quality and quantity of such materials. 

In the first drilling exploration phases, several test holes can be excavated for carotage covering a large area. Once site value is confirmed, additional holes can be drilled and people can learn more about site quality. The company has to determine whether exploiting the site will generate profits that exceed the costs of drilling and the ongoing site maintenance costs once it is active. A site with potentially poor returns could be too expensive to invest, leading the company to pull out.

The oil industry also uses exploration to pervade suspect oil deposits. Drill samples are analyzed to determine the quality of the crude, while geologists work on estimates of how much oil can be available at the site. People are sometimes surprised to learn that crude oil actually enters into quality ranges that determine what can be done on the market by analyzing oil deposits on a critical site.

Geologists can use drilling exploration to learn more about geological layers without the specific target of exploiting mineral resources. Carotages can provide a great deal of information about geological composition of a site and history. These samples can also be picked up by ice and mud deposits to collect layers of stored data that provides climatic information; Pollen displacement can indicate change in time, for example, while increases in deposits of certain chemicals can sometimes be related to geological or human activity.