An Ultra-Deep Well, Shenditake-1, 10 Thousand Meters Deep, Was Drilled In China
Drilling depth of the Shenditake-1 ultra-deep well in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) on March 4 at 14:48. reached 10 thousand m, which marks a breakthrough in the country’s deep geological exploration. Xinhua agency reports this.
Shenditake-1 well
- located in the interior region of the Taklamakan Desert, in the Tarim Basin in northwestern China;
- design depth – 11 thousand m;
- the well should become one of the deepest in the world;
- from the start of drilling on May 30, 2023: the well penetrated 13 continental formations; more than 1 thousand drill pipes and more than 20 drill bits were used.
Wang Chunsheng, chief expert on the Tarim oil field at China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which is in charge of drilling, said this is the first time China has drilled a vertical well more than 10,000 meters deep. He also noted that after reaching 10 thousand meters, serious problems will be encountered, such as temperatures above 200°C and reservoir pressure above 130 MPa, and the complexity will increase with each meter.
Tarim Basin
- the most promising direction for the development of oil and gas in China;
- thickness of sedimentary rocks – up to 10 thousand m or more;
- the foundation is composed of Precambrian rocks, the gently lying platform cover is Paleozoic;
- the edges are complicated by Mesozoic-Cenozoic foothill troughs.
The deepest well in the world
The deepest well to date is located in Russia, on the Kola Peninsula. The Kola superdeep well SG-3 was built for about 20 years, until 1989. Its depth is 12 km 262 m – about 0.2% of the way to the center of the Earth.
