China’s oil giant PetroChina has dug some 8,882 meters below
Earth’s surface to create the deepest oil well on land in Asia. The previous
record was set by another Chinese oil major.
The drilling of the Luntan One well at the Tarim oilfield in
northwest China’s Xinjiang was completed on Thursday, Chinese media reported,
citing the local branch of the company. It took PetroChina more than a year to
finish the work due to the complex geological structure and high temperature at
the site.
To imagine the depth of the
recently drilled oil well, you can compare it to the highest mountain in the
world, Mount Everest, which is 8,848 meters high. PetroChina itself says that
they basically drilled Everest, “just
underground,” according the manager of exploration division,
Qiu Bin.
The new oil well is even
deeper than the previous record of the region, belonging to China Petrochemical
Corporation, also known as Sinopec. Finished in February and located at the
same oilfield, the now-second-deepest Asian oil well stretches down some 8,588
meters beneath Earth.
Source: RT