China has officially begun drilling a major well in the country, the deepest in the world and a milestone in Earth exploration.
It is a 11,100 m narrow crater located in the Tarim Basin in the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region. Thanks to work at this site, the Beijing regime hopes to be able to explore Earth’s internal structure and evolution as well as the planet’s surface areas in greater detail and access valuable data for geological investigations in the country .
The initiative is also part of efforts by the executive in charge of the National Petroleum Corporation to learn about the subsoil in greater detail.
The project, which has an estimated duration of 457 days, involves the hauling of more than 2,000 tonnes of heavy equipment—such as drill bits and pipe—designed to withstand underground temperatures of up to 200 C and pressures 1,300 times higher than atmospheric pressure.
These machines will traverse more than 10 continental strata – including the Cretaceous System, a series of stratified rocks up to 145 million years old.
However, the task—beyond difficult logistical conditions of extreme depth—will be a real challenge due to the environment in which it is found.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a large truck running on two thin steel cables,” said Xinhua Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The operation as “a bold attempt to explore uncharted territory of Earth and push the limits of human understanding”.
The drilling follows repeated encouragement from Xi Jinping for his country to focus its efforts on exploring new frontiers, both in space and underground.
Already in 2021, the Chinese leader urged the country’s leading scientists to break new barriers in various fields, stressing the need to boost the national energy supply with a focus on the development of Chinese giants and the exploration of natural resources Was.
Natural Resources Minister Wang Guanghua said some time ago, “China will launch a new round of domestic exploration operations, focusing on strategic bulk minerals that are in short supply.”
Coincidentally, the well is located in the Tarim Basin, an area rich in oil and gas resources but notorious for the difficulties in exploration there.
In any case, the deepest underground well on the Asian continent is located in this basin, which is operated by the Chinese state oil company Sinopec. It reaches a depth of 8,937.77 metres.
Meanwhile, the world’s deepest hole is located in the northeastern region of Kola in Russia, which reached 12,262 meters during drilling in 1992.
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