NGUs forth focus sheet is about the Norway’s unique drill core archive and is written by Gudmund Løvø. This ca. 2200 square-metre storage facility, located at Løkken Verk in Trøndelag county, holds the geological heritage for the entire nation.
This extensive archive contains more than 800,000 metres of drill cores (on 6000 pallets) retrieved from Norwegian bedrock mines and ore deposits, as well many other geological materials. In addition the archive contains more than 1000m of shelves with maps, publications, reports, etc.
Need for more minerals and metals
In the development of modern technology there is a need for more and new minerals and metals. Additionally, analytical techniques are advancing year by year. An archive of the geology of Norway is therefore an essential resource. The Geological Survey of Norway owns and operates this critical archive of Norway’s geological heritage.
The National Drill Core and Sample Centre was established in 1991, four years after mining operations at Løkken Verk were terminated. The main objective of the archive is the preservation of knowledge of the ore- and mineral deposits in Norway.
Drill cores from exploration and mining operations are transported to Løkken, where the material is registered and organized. The “earliest acquired” samples stored at the Centre are from drilling operations at Løkken Gruber in 1906.
The geological age of the oldest rocks in the Centre, a representative sample of a unit of gneiss from Kautokeino in Finnmark, is 2,975 million years: this gneiss is among the oldest rock found in Norway.
Over the years, the archive has been expanded to include natural and building stones, samples from general geological mapping, geotechnical material, marine geological samples, and geochemical materials.
The archive now contains rock samples collected in the course of 100 years of exploration for and extraction of mineral resources in Norway. The replacement cost of the collection is currently estimated to be at approximately one billion Norwegian kroner (NOK).
At the core storage NGU have logging facilities for rental. We also provide services such as core splitting and sampling.
