China has started digging the deepest borehole, on Tuesday, with a planned depth of 11,100 meters to explore the areas deep under the surface of the planet.
According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the borehole is being drilled in a desert in the Tarim basin in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. The narrow shaft will drill deep into more than 10 continental strata and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust which consists of stratified rocks dating back 145 million years.
The project has been taken up by the country’s leading oil and gas producer, China National Petroleum Corporation, to complete in 457 days and has been described as “a landmark in China’s deep-Earth exploration” by the state media.
In a statement, China National Petroleum Corporation said, researching the depth of the planet will allow scientists to study the internal structure and evolution of the Earth to yield data for geoscience research.
A technical expert involved in the operation, Wang Chunsheng, said that studying the unknown territory of the Earth is a gallant effort that will lead to the expansion of the edge of human understanding.
However, this project is not going to be an easy one. Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua, “The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables.”
The equipment used for drilling weighs over 2,000 tonnes and is meant to resist temperatures up to 200C and atmospheric pressure higher than 1300 beneath the Earth’s surface. The project might face hurdles at extreme depths due to the intense ground environment of the Tarim basin which is the hottest and driest desert of China.
The project is an attempt to explore new ventures in space as well as the depths of the planet. The Chinese president, in 2021, encouraged the country’s scientists to explore the unknown spheres such as deep Earth exploration. In addition, Xi Jinping has emphasized the need to bolster domestic energy supply, urging prominent Chinese energy companies to search for required natural resources. The Xinjiang region is rich in mineral deposits and oil.
A considerable amount of oil and gas flows were found 8,500 meters deep in a well in the Tarim basin by Sinopec, China’s largest refining company.
The world’s deepest man-made hole is The Kola Superdeep Borehole in Nort West Russia with a depth of 12,262 meters.
