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Glory hole (petroleum production)

A glory hole is an unofficial term for a big and inspiring mine excavation open to the layer. The term may mean any one of a number of things:

-A deep mine shaft.

-An open-pit mine.

-In the block caving process of underground mining, ore subsides from above into a mine burrow. If enough ore is taken out, the ground surface subsides into a layer depression known as a glory hole. Instances comprise the Climax and Henderson molybdenum mines in the U.S. state of Colorado.

-Diggings in construction sites can also be referred to as glory holes.

A glory hole in the perspective of the offshore petroleum industry is an excavation into the sea floor designed to defend the wellhead equipment inaugurated at the layer of a petroleum well from icebergs or pack ice. An inexpensively attractive alternative for exploiting offshore petroleum resources is a floating platform; yet, ice may pose a stern danger to this solution. While floating platforms may be built to withstand ice loading up to a design threshold, for the biggest icebergs or the chunky pack ice the only wise alternative is to move out of the way. Floating platforms may be detached from the wellheads in order to let them to be moved away from threatening ice, but the wellhead equipment is fixed in place and therefore susceptible.

The keel of an iceberg or pack ice may lengthen far beneath the surface of the water. If this keel lengthens deep adequate to make contact with the sea floor, it will comb the sea floor as the ice moves with the electricity. To guard the wellhead equipment from possible combing, a glory hole is excavated into the sea floor. This excavation should be profound enough to let adequate clearance among the top of the wellhead equipment and the surrounding sea floor. The resulting glory hole may be either open or cased. A cased glory hole uses steel casing as a retaining wall while an open glory hole is just an excavation.

Because of the cost of excavating individual glory holes, characteristically every glory hole will have many wellheads. Locating multiple wellheads within a solitary glory hole is made probable by the means of directional drilling.