The Norwegian Coastal Administration has started a new round of core drilling from the Kjøde side to examine the quality of the rock in the route for the Stad ship tunnel: a drilling rig enters the mountain on the other side of the county road.   

In total, the Norwegian Coastal Administration will drill up to 1,050 m in a north-west direction, parallel to the planned ship tunnel. The core samples have a minimum diameter of 45 mm.  

The core drilling is a continuation of the work that was done in 2019, when a total of 800 m was penetrated into the mountain, but only about 150 m of this was from the Kjøde side.  

The goal now is to get the drill through the rest of the tunnel, so that the entire tunnel run of a total of 1,700 m will be mapped.   

The work is being done in order to have better control over rock quality and ground conditions, which is a key element of risk and uncertainty in the project. 

The drilling, which will be carried out by Entreprenørservice AS, will last until late autumn. The work must be done during the day.  

The government has asked the Coastal Administration to look at the possibility of reducing the costs of building the Stad ship tunnel.  Managing to reduce risk and uncertainty, the Coastal Administration will also manage to reduce costs.  

The tunnel will be 1.7 km long (2.2 km including the entrance area), 50 m high and with a width of 36 m - which means that vessels up to the size of Kystruten and Hurtigruten will be able to safely sail past the challenging Stadlandet. 

For further information please click here and no/132 for the tunnelbuilder archive. Visit https://kystverket.no/en/ and https://www.regjeringen.no. 29/23.