China this week began drilling in the Taklamakan desert, which will be the world’s second-deepest well. If engineers’ forecasts are met, the excavation will reach 11,100 meters in about two years, a depth exceeded only by the Kola superwell (Russia), which is 12,226 meters.
Chinese officials have presented the project as an initiative with exclusively scientific objectives, to improve knowledge about the relatively deep layers of the Earth’s crust and the history of Earth’s formation, but do not rule out It is hoped that this initiative will also work to improve techniques for deep drilling in particularly difficult areas and, finally, as an intermediate step in the exploitation of mining resources at great depths; including hydrocarbons.
Excavation facilities in an isolated and desert area. Xinhua
The official Xinhua agency indicated that the operation began at 11:46 local time (03:46 GMT) on Tuesday, May 30, which “represents a significant progress in China’s deep Earth exploration and an opportunity to study Provides. subsurface regions of the planet.”
The location (red mark) of the well that China has begun drilling. LV-GM
The core of the new Chinese super-well is in the Tarim Basin in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Chinese officials have not provided much technical information about the project, noting for example that “during the excavation process, work equipment includes drill bits and drilling pipes weighing more than 2,000 tons, which penetrate the earth.” and penetrate more than 10 continental strata, including the Cretaceous system, the Xinhua note said.
Wang Chunsheng, an expert technician participating in the project, explained that “drilling a well more than 10,000 meters deep is a bold attempt to study the uncharted territory of the planet and push the boundaries of human understanding.”
The required depth and the complexity of the subsoil are the two main challenges of the project. Xinhua
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a large truck running on two thin steel cables,” said Sun Jinsheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The Tarim Basin is one of the most difficult areas to investigate due to the harsh terrain and difficult underground conditions.
Currently, the deepest onshore well in Asia is by Chinese state oil company Sinopec, also in the Tarim Basin area, reaching a depth of 8,937.77 metres.
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Drilling of the Kola Super Deep Well (KSDB) or SG-3 began in the 1970s when the area near Norway and Finland belonged to the Soviet Union, now Russia. Although in theory it was a secret to Westerners, its promoters have always reiterated that the excavation, which reached 12,262 in 1989 when it was considered complete, has been done for scientific purposes only. It should be remembered that most of these deep wells are used for oil and gas exploration. The initial aim was to reach 15,000 m but technical and economic problems dampened expectations. In any case, the Kola superhole surpassed the previous world record, the Bertha Rogers well in Washita County, Oklahoma, USA, at 9,583 m.
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