The world’s second deepest borehole will serve scientific and commercial purposes.

The China National Petroleum Corporation, the country’s state-run and largest oil producer, started on 30 May drilling a hole in the Taklamakan Desert. Located in the northwest Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the borehole will be 11.1 kilometers deep and will be completed in 457 days, according to the Xinhua news agency. 

The project, called Deep Earth 1-Yuejin 3-3XC Well, has a dual purpose. For one, Chinese engineers want to give scientists new geological insights by studying soils formed during the Cretaceous Period (66-145 million years ago), hoping to reach even strata from the Cambrian Period (more than 500 million years ago).

Another purpose is to explore the Taklamakan Desert basin for oil and gas at super depths. This basin is suspected to be a source for the fossil reserves extracted in the Tarim basin – one of the largest and deepest fields in China.

The Tarim basin collects water drainin from three mountain chains and is thought to have been formed during the closure of the Palaeo-Asian Ocean more than 200 million years ago.

If completed as expected, the Taklamakan hole will be the third deepest in the world. Currently the BD-04A oil well in the Al-Shaheen oil field in Qatar – 12,290 meters – is the deepest. The second is the Kola superdeep borehole in northwest Russia with 12,262 meters, which took more than 20 years to drill in the Kola Peninsula (until 1994).

CNPC has deployed some 2,000 tons of equipment for the project and built the infrastructure around the future borehole.

See below video footage on this topic from New China TV.