In August 2009 the ICDP (International Continental Drilling Program) definitively approved the 'Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project', the first experiment in the world of deep drilling in a collapsing caldera, i.e. in one of the volcanic areas at the most? highly explosive, one of the so-called 'Supervolcanoes'. Will the deep well reach 4 km depth, and temperatures predictably between 500°C and 600°C. Will I start? in the Bagnoli area (Bagnolifutura, ex-Italsider area), on the eastern caldera edge, and devier? with a slope of about 25° towards the center of the Gulf of Pozzuoli, the center of the Phlegraean caldera. By September, will it begin? the drilling of the pilot well, which will reach? the 500 meters of depth?. The pilot well, in addition to being an important verification of the conditions of stability? and temperature in the surface layers, sar? crucial for the design of deep drilling and will allow? the realization of numerous experiments, of great importance both for the volcanological study of the Phlegrean caldera and for the evaluation of the geothermal resources in the area. Various important international projects converge on the construction of the pilot well and the related experiments; among these the GEISER Project (EU-VIIFP), aimed at the study and mitigation of seismicity phenomena? induced in EGS geothermal fields. The next appointments will be the pilot well by the autumn of 2010, followed by deep drilling in 2011.
Project coordinators and working group: G. De Natale - INGV (Coordinator), C. Troise - INGV (Co-Leader), J. Erzinger - GFZ (Principal Investigator), D. Hill - USGS (Principal Investigator), C Kilburn - UCL (Principal Investigator), A. Gudmundsson - Royal Holloway Univ. London (Principal Investigator), L. Burlini+ - ETHZ (Principal Investigator), MJ Jurado - CSIC (Chief Scientist for Logging Operations).