The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) announced on Thursday that it has completed the drilling of the deepest vertical well in Asia, with a borehole reaching a depth of 10,910 meters in China's northwestern desert.
Located in the heart of the Taklimakan Desert in the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the well, known as "Shenditake-1," is a scientific exploration project.
The vertical well, the second of its kind in the world, also achieved other engineering breakthroughs globally, including the deepest liner cementing, deepest wireline imaging logging, and the fastest onshore drilling to exceed 10,000 meters.
"Every meter drilled at depths exceeding 10,000 meters poses a challenge," said Wang Chunsheng, chief technical expert of the Tarim oilfield branch of PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer.
"We have overcome difficulties such as ultra-heavy loads, wellbore instability, drill bit fatigue, tool failure and well leakage within the formation," Wang added.
To support the project, CNPC developed the world's first 12,000-meter automated drilling rig and a suite of advanced ultra-deep well logging tools.
The drilling began on May 30, 2023, and it took just 279 days to reach a depth of 10,000 meters. However, drilling the additional 910 meters beyond 10,000 meters required 300 days, China Media Group reports. According to Wang, the drill had penetrated 12 continental strata in the Tarim Basin and reached high-quality oil-and-gas-bearing rocks in the well section from 10,851 meters to 10,910 meters.
At present, China's onshore deep and ultra-deep oil and gas resources total 67.1 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, accounting for 34 percent of the country's total oil and gas resources. However, only 3 billion tonnes of oil equivalent have been proven in China's ultra-deep formations. So far, more than 300 wells drilled in the Tarim Oilfield have reached depths exceeding 8,000 meters, delivering a total production of 19.57 million tonnes of ultra-deep oil and gas.
Source(s): Xinhua News Agency
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