China is now attacking its basements. Beijing began drilling a hole with a planned depth of 11,000 meters on May 30, The Guardian reported on June 6, citing China’s official Xinhua news agency. According to the English daily, the stated objective of such a well by the China National Petroleum Corporation – one of the main Chinese oil producers which is at the head of this project – is “to study the internal structure and evolution of the Earth, and to provide data for geoscientific research”.
This drilling is located in northwestern China, in the Tarim Basin desert (Xinjiang), according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. The well will join the earth’s crust, crossing 10 continental strata. It will make it possible to reach rocks that are 145 million years old. Chinese state media hailed it as “a landmark in deep-Earth exploration in China.” The project must last precisely 457 days.
“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving over two thin steel cables,” Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua in comments reported by the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Guardian. The equipment used by Beijing to drill the well weighs more than 2,000 tons and will be able to withstand atmospheric pressure 1,300 times that of the Earth’s surface.
According to Chinese officials, the objective here is twofold: economic and scientific. On the one hand, Beijing is seeking to accentuate its energy independence in terms of oil and gas, in a region known for its oil deposits. This is in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire to “boost the national energy supply, pushing Chinese energy giants to seek natural resources,” notes the Guardian.
On the other hand, China hopes to collect scientific data. According to Bloomberg, such a project could identify energy and mineral resources as well as “assess the risk of environmental disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions”. Nevertheless, the geophysicist and research director at the CNRS Christophe Vigny interviewed by Le Parisien, believes that “the scientific interest is quite low” since “earthquakes are often triggered at a depth greater than 10 km below the surface”. The area chosen for the drilling would also present a “rather low” seismicity and volcanic activity, according to this same specialist.
However, it will not be the deepest man-made hole in the world. This title still goes to the Kola drilling located in the northwest of Russia, whose drilling extended from the 1970s to 1989. This goes down to 12,262 meters
