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I N S I D E R
China Is
Drilling a 10000-Meter-Deep Hole Into Earth's Crust
The project
will provide data on the Earth's internal structure. Chinese President
Xi Jinping named deep Earth sciences one of four strategic frontiers
to explore.
By
Alia Shoaib
June 3, 2023
An oil well of Tarim
Oilfield at Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang.Photographer:
Tan Hui/VCG/Getty Images
President Xi called for more
underground exploration in 2021
The narrow shaft will break through 10 continental strata
Scientists in China have begun
drilling a hole over 10,000 meters (32,808 feet) deep into the Earth's
crust, a report says.
The drilling project, led by the
country's largest oil producer China National Petroleum Corp., would
be among the deepest ever drilled.
The project began on Tuesday in
the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, according to China's state-run
news agency Xinhua.
The drilling process will
penetrate more than 10 layers of the Earth's crust and reach the
Cretaceous system, consisting of rock dating back up to 145 million
years.
"The construction difficulty of
the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two
thin steel cables," Sun Jinsheng, a Chinese Academy of Engineering
scientist, told Xinhua news agency.
Wang Chunsheng, a technical
expert part of the operation, said that drilling the borehole is an
attempt to explore the unknown territory of the Earth and expand the
boundaries of human knowledge, according to Xinhua.
The project is expected to take
457 days and will provide data on the Earth's internal structure while
using deep underground drilling technologies,
Bloomberg reported, citing China National Petroleum Corp.
In a statement, the state-owned
oil refiner, Sinopec, said the goal was to drill through an
"underground Mount Everest,"
per Metro.
Everest in the Himalayas is the
world's highest peak at 29,031 feet.
In a 2021 speech addressing the
nation's top scientists, Chinese President Xi Jinping named deep Earth
sciences one of four strategic frontiers to explore.
The project could help identify
mineral and energy resources and assess the risks of environmental
disasters like earthquakes and volcano eruptions, Bloomberg noted.
This hole will not be the deepest
human-made despite its impressive depth. The deepest hole is still the
Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, which reached 12,262 meters (40,230
feet) in 1989 after 20 years of drilling.
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