China plans to drill 15km into the Earth’s surface to hunt for fossil fuels and to learn about the structure of the earth’s crust, South China Morning Post reports.
The drilling will be done by a special rig developed by the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences with a number of universities and companies.
State news agency Xinhua reported that the so-called “Deep Earth National Science and Technology Megaproject” was aimed at ensuring national energy and resource security.
The aim is to generate “landmark and leading-edge scientific breakthroughs as soon as possible”.
Jilin University, one of the project’s associates, said target technologies include the control of high-temperature mud and the automated coordination of ultra-long drill strings with multiple robotic units.
The project was proposed in 2018, based on knowledge gained from the “Crust-1 10k” project.
Sun Youhong, vice-president of Jilin University and the director of the drilling programme, said the project would have to deal with “daunting problems”. Temperatures reach 400 degrees C at a depth of 13,000m, and high stress in the crust means rocks are likely to explode and damage the drill string.
No site has been named for the experiment, although nine candidates were identified back in 2018, including volcanic areas of Changbai mountain range, which pass thorugh Jilin Province, and Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which is thought to have potential as a source of oil and gas.
Currently, China’s deepest oil well extends to around 11km, making it the world’s second deepest.
The world’s deepest well is Russia’s Z-44 Chayvo, drilled on the Sakhalin shelf in eastern Russia, which reached a depth of 15km, drilled in the Soviet era.
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