# Norway is Building The World's Deepest Mega-Tunnel ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel.webp]] **Creator:** The B1M · **Published:** 2026-06-03 · **Length:** 29:30 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho2luOd8JH4) > Caption source: YouTube English (United Kingdom) manual captions via TubeAlfred (`youtube_video_transcript`, kind=manual, language=en-GB); yt-dlp hit HTTP 429 on the caption request. Speaker names and fuller interview quotes for **Anne-Merete Gilje** and **Anne-Brit Moen** are confirmed from The B1M's companion article, [Inside the World's Deepest Subsea Tunnel](https://www.theb1m.com/video/inside-the-world-s-deepest-subsea-tunnel) by Ian Parkin. YouTube chapters used for section headings. Screenshots from the 720p stream (format 136). Host **Fred Mills**. Contains paid promotion for Procore. Extra footage and images credited to Øyvind Ellingsen, Statens Vegvesen, Implenia, Femern and Rail Baltica. ## Outline ### 0:00 Building Big - **0:02** Europe is in one of its biggest travel-infrastructure sprees — megahubs, mountain tunnels, railways realigning countries — but one project is breaking a record so large it pushes construction to its limit. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0008.webp]] - **0:27** Fred stands on Norway's west coast: vast fjords of mountains and deep seas that also host heavy industry, the engine of the national economy. - **0:51** When that industrial force meets this wild landscape, construction's answer is to go deeper and further than anyone has before. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0030.webp]] - **1:04** Interviewees call the project simply "**Big**"; the fjord itself is about **600–700 m** deep in places. Drill jumbos are revealing rock untouched for millions of years. - **1:42** Fred frames it as the "Holy Grail" of construction and sets out to see how the crews are doing it. ### 1:53 Postal Route - **1:50** Hello from **Stavanger**. To show why this is among the hardest places on Earth for a civil engineer, Fred frames the story through the old postal route. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0113.webp]] - **2:03** Norway's first west-coast postal route (1647) carried mail from **Bergen** to **Trondheim** without routing through Oslo. First postmaster **Henrik Morian** rowed the fjords then faced **1,500 m** vertical climbs; snow and ice often shut the path. - **2:48** That pathway stuck and became today's **E39** highway: ~**1,100 km** from Trondheim to **Kristiansand**, then a ferry into Denmark and the rest of Europe — about **21 hours** with **nine** ferry crossings, more than any other single road in Europe. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0180.webp]] - **3:25** Since the 1990s **Statens Vegvesen** (Norwegian Public Roads Administration) has added suspension bridges and **30+** tunnels each over a kilometre — but Norway has **1,000+** fjords, each unique, so there is no standard crossing recipe. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0250.webp]] - **4:08** Underwater valley walls often continue farther below the waterline than the mountains rise above; **Lisefjord** illustrates the glacial carving at the end of the last ice age. ### 5:06 Big Problems: Big Solutions - **5:03** Remaining uncrossed fjords are among the biggest and hardest. At **Sulafjorden**, steep cliffs force the ferry onto low land; a **7.5 km** gap is too long for a conventional bridge (even Turkey's **Çanakkale** span would fall short). ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0306.webp]] - **5:29** Seabed depth reaches ~**400 m** (vs English Channel ~60 m average / 174 m max). Ideas under study include a **floating tunnel** tethered just beneath the surface (never tried) and a **multi-span suspension bridge** with a mid-water tower on seabed columns. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0380.webp]] - **6:20** Fred pivots to a **Procore** sponsor segment: AI as a jobsite "right-hand man" for multi-team chaos, deliveries and thin margins — then returns to the tunnel further south. ### 7:40 The Mighty Boknafjord - **7:40** **Boknafjord**: ~**20 km** wide at the mouth, **45 km** inland, hundreds of metres deep. Between Stavanger and Bergen sit fishing, oil and gas — together **>20%** of Norway's GDP. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0460.webp]] - **8:15** Today's path is a patchwork: tunnel → island → bridge → tunnel → island → ferry. Truck traffic is more than twice the national average; roads are often narrow/single-lane; accident closures are common. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0500.webp]] - **8:51** One continuous tunnel is the answer — and the only way is down. ### 9:03 Going Down - **9:18** Project manager **Anne-Merete Gilje** (Statens Vegvesen): the tunnel links both shores and the island of **Kvitsøy** so ferries can leave the European highway. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0543.webp]] - **9:33** **Rogaland fixed link / Rogfast**: twin-bore, **~27 km** across Boknafjord. Three simultaneous fronts — south from Stavanger, north toward the deepest point, and mid-route **Kvitsøy** with a **200 m**-deep multi-level interchange across four rock faces. - **10:08** At **~26.7 km** and **~388–390 m** deepest, it will be the world's longest and deepest subsea road tunnel. Depth context: you could fit the **Empire State Building** between the tunnel crown and the fjord surface. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0620.webp]] - **10:29** Gilje on alignment: a shallower outer **ridge** (~370 m water) lets them stop around **~400 m** depth instead of following 600–700 m water farther inland. ### 11:40 Geology - **11:40** Hardest part? Gilje: "**the geology**" — uncertainty that can destroy the whole project. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0700.webp]] - **11:54** Fault zones crush rock between distinct bands. Southern **phyllite** is dense and workable but poor as road aggregate; northern **gneiss** is cracked and full of highly pressurised water. - **12:47** Site geologist **Anne-Brit Moen**: a recent breakthrough poured **5,000–6,000 L/min** at **330 m** below sea level — about **33 bar** (roughly ten times domestic supply pressure), blasting into the tunnel until big pumps took hold. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0780.webp]] ### 14:14 The Norwegian Tunneling Method - **13:51** No TBM here — geology drives method. Decades of Scandinavian work produced the **Norwegian Tunnelling Method**: flexible **drill and blast**. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0854.webp]] - **14:23** Front line is a **drill jumbo** — four robotic arms, video-game-like cab with joysticks and screens. First: **15 m** probe holes for water and stability. - **15:22** Before blasting, a Norwegian **grouting** machine injects a waterproof seal: tanks hold ~**2.5 t** of microcement (~**25 µm**); a computer blends microcement, superplasticiser, water and slurried silica fume; mix goes in at ~**100 bar**, ~**20 L/min**; each round can use **5–75 t** of grout. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t0950.webp]] - **16:17** Surveyors mark a grid with laser-guided **total stations** (no GPS). Jumbo drills **5 m** blast holes packed with explosives; after the shot, rubble is cleared, waterproof membrane + **shotcrete** go on, rock bolts hold deformation, then **~60,000** individually designed concrete lining panels. Each cycle advances about **five metres** — and there are **two** parallel bores. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1040.webp]] - **16:59** Gilje: a hundreds-of-metres-long TBM would be too slow to respond to water leaks; small drill-and-blast gear can reverse and treat the face immediately. Geologists map every blast (~every fifth metre) and set support for the next round. ### 18:52 Fresh Air - **18:49** Beyond lighting and escape routes, long deep tunnels need serious ventilation: **245 jet fans** plus shoreline ventilation towers — still not enough alone. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1132.webp]] - **19:23** Mid-route **Kvitsøy** hosts two huge ventilation shafts. Fred stands at the bottom of a finished shaft — skyscraper-scale, a sliver of daylight at the top. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1200.webp]] - **20:16** Build sequence: pilot hole from surface → **2.4 m** bit reamed up over ~three weeks → drill-and-blast to **~9.4 m** diameter (spoil down the pilot) → shotcrete and bolts → hoist crews for another **~200 m** of deepening under a surface housing. ### 21:29 The Kvitsøy Interchange - **21:25** Above: island of ~**500** people. Below: the most complex subsea road junction ever built — and a world first for depth/complexity. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1289.webp]] - **22:08** Northbound traffic takes a slip road to the deepest road roundabout on Earth, into a link tunnel/bridge over the main bores, then the southbound roundabout; a slip climbs **4.1 km** to the island. Woven in: access tunnels, cross-passages and the ventilation shafts — Fred's "underground rabbit warren" / spaghetti of nine or ten tubes. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1380.webp]] - **23:25** He calls this the jewel of Rogfast: the place where the full magnitude of the engineering hits. ### 24:16 Norwegian Construction - **24:16** In Norway, major roads are not just imposed from Oslo: administrations propose options and local communities shape them. Kvitsøy gains a permanent link onto the new artery, **1.2 km²** of new land reclaimed with tunnel spoil, upgraded roads, and **four** new bridges built before underground work began. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1450.webp]] - **25:24** At the southern **EO3** site toward Stavanger: temporary wall lights, inflated air ducts, the live drill face as the frontier. Much plant is **electrified**, but batteries stay out of the tunnel — so crews run what Fred calls the world's biggest extension lead from the surface. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1528.webp]] - **26:37** An on-site workshop repairs vehicles underground and relocates every **~1,500 m** to keep travel time to the face short. Pride of the job, per the crew lead: the people working safely and efficiently in the dark without seeing sunlight every day. ### 27:40 A Pact With Nature - **27:40** For thousands of years Norwegian life meant negotiating with water and landscape, not conquering it. Rogfast is that same negotiation at millimetre-and-kilometre scale. ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1662.webp]] - **28:25** Nearby **Ryefast** still holds the current longest/deepest undersea road-tunnel record; many Rogfast hands cut their teeth there — in a sense breaking their own record. Opening target **2033**; drivers will cross Boknafjord in minutes. Dozens more E39 fjord crossings remain (including unresolved Sulafjorden concepts). ![[images/Norway-is-Building-The-Worlds-Deepest-Mega-Tunnel-t1720.webp]] - **29:02** Closing Procore sponsor reminder and subscribe CTA for The B1M. ## Things mentioned ### Projects and tunnels - Rogfast / Rogaland fixed link (twin-bore subsea road tunnel) - Ryefast (current world-record longest/deepest undersea road tunnel) - Sulafjorden crossing concepts (floating submerged tunnel; multi-span suspension with mid-water tower) - E39 coastal highway; EO3 southern construction site ### Places and geography - Boknafjord (~20 km mouth, 45 km inland); Kvitsøy island (~500 people) - Stavanger (oil capital / fourth-largest city); Bergen; Trondheim; Kristiansand - Lisefjord; Norwegian west coast fjords (1,000+); English Channel depth comparison - Çanakkale Bridge (Turkey) as span-length foil for Sulafjorden ### Engineering and methods - Norwegian Tunnelling Method (drill and blast vs TBM) - Drill jumbo (four arms; 15 m probes; 5 m blast holes); grouting machine (microcement ~25 µm, ~100 bar, 5–75 t per round) - Shotcrete, rock bolts, waterproof membrane; ~60,000 concrete lining panels; ~5 m advance per cycle - Twin parallel bores; laser total-station survey (no GPS underground) - 245 jet fans; shoreline ventilation towers; two Kvitsøy shafts (pilot → 2.4 m ream → ~9.4 m finished) - Kvitsøy interchange: dual roundabouts, slip roads, link tunnel/bridge, 4.1 km climb to island, ~200–250 m depth - Pressurised water inflows (5,000–6,000 L/min at ~33 bar / 330 m below sea level) - Phyllite (south) vs gneiss with water-bearing cracks (north); fault zones - Electrified plant on long surface power cables; mobile underground workshop every ~1,500 m - 1.2 km² land reclamation from tunnel spoil; four new surface bridges at Kvitsøy ### Numbers and targets - ~26.7–27 km length; ~388–390 m maximum depth (~400 m design low point on outer ridge) - Fjord water depth ~370 m on alignment vs 600–700 m farther inland - Empire State Building height as depth comparison - E39: ~1,100 km, ~21 hours, nine ferries; fishing/oil/gas >20% of GDP - Completion target 2033 ### People and organisations - Fred Mills (host); Ian Parkin (companion article) - Anne-Merete Gilje (Statens Vegvesen project manager) - Anne-Brit Moen (site geologist) - Henrik Morian (first west-coast postmaster, 1647) - Statens Vegvesen; Implenia; Øyvind Ellingsen (imagery) - Procore (sponsor); Femern; Rail Baltica (extra footage credits) ### Sponsor and channel - Procore / Procore AI (paid promotion) - Fred's book *MEGA BUILDS*; Get Construction Talking; *The World's Best Construction Podcast* (description) ## Biographies ### Fred Mills Founder and on-camera host of **The B1M**. Walks Boknafjord sites and deep tunnel faces, frames Rogfast against Norway's fjord geography and E39 ferry network, and covers the Procore sponsor segments. ### Anne-Merete Gilje Project manager at **Statens Vegvesen** on Rogfast. Explains the outer-ridge alignment that limits depth to ~400 m, why geology is the existential risk, and why drill-and-blast is safer than a long TBM when sudden water inflows demand an immediate return to the face. ### Anne-Brit Moen Site geologist on the project. Describes a recent **5,000–6,000 L/min** water breakthrough at **330 m** below sea level (~**33 bar**) and the pumping response that contains such events. ### Henrik Morian Norway's first west-coast postmaster after the **1647** Bergen–Trondheim mail route. Embodies the pre-modern version of the same geography problem: rowing open fjords, climbing ~1,500 m shores, and losing stretches to snow and ice. ### Statens Vegvesen Norwegian Public Roads Administration. Since the 1990s has been upgrading the E39 with bridges and long tunnels; owns Rogfast as the Rogaland fixed link meant to remove ferries from this stretch of the European highway.