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Chinese engineers began construction on a new, extremely deep borehole on Thursday as the nation intensifies its search for natural resources buried tens of thousands of feet underground.
According to state-run news agency Xinhua, the hole will eventually extend 10,520 meters (34,514 feet) into the earth in southwest China’s Sichuan Basin. According to the article, experts expected to uncover a natural gas reserve in the area because it is a significant area for gas production.
The statement was made just a few weeks after China started digging a new, even deeper super-deep borehole, one that will reach a targeted depth of 11,100 meters (36,417 feet). The Tarim Basin, an autonomous territory in northwest China, is the site of that project.
They would rank among the two deepest boreholes created by humans in the world if they were finished. They would not, however, be the deepest.
The current record belongs to the now-defunct Kola Superdeep Borehole in northwest Russia, a scientific drilling operation from the Soviet era that took 20 years to complete and reached a depth of 12,262 meters (40,229 ft).
From top to bottom, these extremely deep tunnels are longer than Mount Everest, which is around 8,800 meters (28,871 feet) tall. Humans have reached the moon but when it comes to exploring the land deep beneath our feet, we have only scratched the surface of our planet.
Scientists can learn more about how the Earth formed by drilling deep since the crust serves as a geological history of our planet’s formation.
However, there are also powerful financial motivations, such as the chance to access potentially profitable underground energy supplies.
Major state-owned oil corporations comprise both of the firms involved in the Chinese boreholes.
According to Xinhua, PetroChina Southwest Oil and Gasfield Co., a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, one of the largest state-owned energy firms in China, is running the most recent project in the Sichuan Basin.
The state news outlet described it as a move of “great significance,” noting that it aims to advance China’s oil and gas engineering while supporting the exploration of deeply buried resources and equipment capabilities. It said, referring to the way rocks are stacked in the Sichuan Basin, “The drilling will further reveal the secrets of evolution under the Sinian formation.”
According to Chen Lili, PetroChina Southwest Oil’s deputy chief engineer, there would be many “world-class challenges” to overcome during the drilling operation.
The 2,000-ton design of the Xinjiang project, which was previously revealed, was branded a “telescope” into the deepest part of the earth by Xinhua and was intended to pierce more than 10 continental strata. It said the drilling setup can withstand 200 degree Celsius and forces 1,700 times greater than that of atmospheric pressure.
It said the drilling setup can withstand 200-degree celsius and forces 1,700 times greater than that of atmospheric pIn May, Sinopec Corp said it had struck sizeable oil and gas flows in an exploration well in the Tarim basin at a depth of 8,591 meters (5.34 miles) below the surface, Reuters reported. China, the world’s second-largest economy and the world’s biggest carbon emitter, has huge energy needs. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared future energy security as a national security priority.
China has become a global leader in renewable energy – it is on track to double its wind and solar energy capacity and hit its 2030 clean energy targets five years early, according to a recent report. But it is also the world’s biggest producer of planet-heating pollution and is ramping up coal production.
The US is the second-largest carbon emitter in the world.
John Kerry, a US climate envoy, met with Chinese leaders this week in Beijing and urged swifter action to address the global catastrophe.
This week, Xi and Kerry did not meet. However, Xi stated at a national conference on environmental protection that China’s commitment to its twin carbon targets of attaining a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 is “unwavering,” according to state news agency Xinhua, when the US climate envoy was in town.
However, he added, “The way, means, speed, and intensity by which we pursue this goal should and must be decided by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others.”
Source- CNN
