China is constantly digging: it wants to create an 11 km tunnel, it had only reached 10 thousand meters, what is the reason?

China has again entered into a controversy for having drilled a hole 11 kilometers deep. It has already started to dig and it is estimated to exceed 11,100 meters. The work has been carried out since last week in the second largest dune desert in the world, taklamakan, located in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, located in the northwest of the country. What shocked the most in this news is that the hole will go through more than 10 continental strata and will reach layers dating from the cretaceous period —the third and last place after the Jurassic— of the planet, between 145 and 66 million years ago, at least that’s how it was reported by the state news agency Xinhua News.

It will take them a little over a year to finish the deep hole

The project has an expected duration of 457 days, who are over 15 months old. During this time, operators will process more than two thousand tons of equipment and machinery, making it too ambitious an initiative. In fact, this is the largest excavation project in China, who will for the first time break the barrier of 10 thousand meters with a well. Notably it won’t be the deepest made by human being. This record is held by the borehole Kola super deep in Russia whose excavation lasted almost two decades until reaching the 12 thousand 262 meters in the year 1989.

Does China want to position itself as the king of technology and science?

This initiative comes just at the precise moment when the country is taking the most important steps in its consolidation as one of the most important powers in the branches of world science and technology. Curiously, on the very day that work began on the new well, beijing sent three astronauts to its orbital space station as part of his plan to walk on the moon before 2030. What questions the whole world… “because China drills a hole deeper than the height of Everest and close to the maximum flight altitude of a commercial aircraft?”

These are the two goals

The first is related to petrochemical company State Sinopec, who carries the project. This company has stated that its goal is “pushing the limits of depth” in the geological prospecting. The project didn’t really come out of nowhere, because drilling the deepest hole in China the proposal was raised two years after the country’s president, Xi Jinping, urged the local scientific community to advance exploration of the depths of the earth’s crust.

“La perforación del pozo tiene dos propósitos: la investigación científica y encontrar gas y petróleo”, affirmed Lyu Xiaogang, representative of the Corporación Nacional de Petroleo de China (CNPC), the mayor empresa de crudo y gas del país y una de las mayores of the world.

Also —and through an explanatory video— the manager assured that the project will serve to build capacity technology of PetroChina, what is it the corporate giant controlled by CNPC which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Thus, the company will consolidate in the field of deep excavations and the manufacture of new machinery.

“To study the 10 kilometers closest to the surface, we generally use other techniques such as seismic tomography and other types. These types of projects are very useful because they provide physical evidence to support this investigation,” Chilean geophysicist Cristian told BBC Mundo. Farías, director of civil works and geology at the Catholic University of Temuco.

The project of China It will also allow them to test the latest technological advances, so that he can open the doors to a time of exploration “very interesting”, or at least that’s what the specialist pointed out.

They could get more gas and oil

The second goal of CNPC is to explore new ultra-deep oil and gas deposits in the northwest of the Asian country. And it is that the hydrocarbon deposits in the extreme depths of the basement – generally below the five thousand meters— They are usually located in marine areas — like the oceans — where the layers of rock and sediment are thicker, although they are also found in some land areas, such as deep sedimentary basins. This is the case of the Tarim basin, located in the Taklamakan desert, and which can harbor significant reserves of oil and natural gas.

If it should be noted that its exploration — according to experts — presents significant technical and technological challenges due to the difficult conditions of the subsoil, such as high pressures and, of course, the extreme temperatures.

“And the stability of this hole is also a big challenge,” said Professor Cristian Farías. Meanwhile, Sun Jinsheng, a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in statements to Xinhua News Agency, pointed out that “the difficulty of building this drilling project is like driving one big truck over two thin steel cables”.

Moreover, the desert taklamakan considered difficult territory to work, with extreme temperatures dropping down to -20ºC in winter and climb to almost 40ºC in summer.