The Deep-sea Drilling Vessel Chikyu Test Drilling off the Shimokita Peninsula
Test Drilling Report and Future Plan

    The Deep-sea Drilling Vessel Chikyu of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC; Yasuhiro Kato, President) is continuing test drilling off the Shimokita Peninsula (100 kilo meters north east off Hachinohe City) at the test site (Appendix).
To adjust equipment and because of Typhoon, test procedure has been delayed. But the emergency disconnect sequence test (*1) of BOP (Blow-Out Preventer) has been done on Sep. 30 and the riser drilling (*2) has been started at 14:00 p.m., Oct.4th.
   Test drilling shall be continuing and the core sampling test shall be done by the middle of Oct.

*1 Emergency disconnect sequence test: Evacuation training to the safe area at the time of emergency by disconnecting riser pipe off from upper part of BOP.
*2 Riser drilling: Drilling method by using riser pipe (pulling down from the drilling vessel to the sea floor) which has drill pipe inside. With BOP, it circulates drilling mud with fluid and it can drill deeper than other methods such as the riser-less drilling, since the mud reinforce wall of the borehole.