Find Treasures Underground! The Drilling Depth Of My Country's First Wanmike Exploration Well Exceeded 9,900 Meters

Yesterday (13th) afternoon, the drilling depth of my country's first Wanmike exploration well, Shendi Take 1 Well, exceeded 9,900 meters, and it is sprinting towards the 10,000-meter formation. So far, my country's first 10,000-meter-deep well has used newly replaced diamond drill bits to extract ancient rock specimens 50 times in a row.

Feng Shaobo, President of PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Oil and Gas Engineering Research Institute: According to our actual measurements, the temperature of the formation at 9,900 meters is now as high as 195°C. The drilling fluid may age at high temperatures, and the pressure of the overlying rock formation is as high as 230 MPa, which is equivalent to what we have at more than 20,000 meters. The pressure endured by the meter-deep seabed and this extreme working condition challenge our drilling tools and drilling fluids all the time.

The Shenzhen Taco 1 well was drilled into a 9,000-meter-deep formation at the end of December last year. Experts told reporters that the high temperature and pressure deep in the 9,000-meter formation, coupled with rock extrusion, caused a significant decline in drilling progress. In addition, the high temperature and pressure deep in the formation also caused damage to some drilling tools and failure of some electronic components. Currently, staff use the measurement-while-drilling system to monitor changes in underground conditions in real time.

Feng Shaobo, President of PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Oil and Gas Engineering Research Institute: Now the downhole temperature has exceeded the temperature resistance limit of active anti-deviation tools. We have explored a set of anti-deviation mechanisms and technical means, which can be used when existing vertical drilling tools cannot be used. Under such circumstances, there are also ways to prevent deviation and straighten the well to ensure the quality of the wellbore at a depth of 10,000 meters.

In recent years, my country has successively made a number of major oil and gas discoveries in the ultra-deep fields of the Tarim, Junggar, and Sichuan basins, further confirming the huge exploration and development potential of my country's ultra-deep layers. According to geological predictions, there may be abundant oil and gas resources buried 10,000 meters deep in the Tarim Basin. Once this well breaks through, it will open up a treasure trove of oil and gas under 10,000 meters and form a replacement field for increasing reserves and production in ultra-deep strata.

Diving thousands of meters into the ground to find oil sources and gas veins

The Tarim Basin ranks first in the country in ultra-deep oil and gas resources. Most of the oil and gas are buried in ultra-deep strata of seven to eight kilometers. The Tarim Oilfield can better unlock the code of deep exploration by drilling wells 10,000 meters deep.

At present, my country's first Wanmike exploration well is drilling into the 10,000-meter formation. The drill bit will drill through 13 sets of formations in the Tarim Basin and eventually open the oldest ultra-deep oil formation in the Tarim Basin.

Yang Xianzhang, Chief Geologist of PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Exploration and Development Research Institute: The source of oil and gas in the Tarim Basin is hidden deeply. We have discovered a 1 billion-ton oil and gas area in the Fuman Oilfield, but no well has yet drilled to the source of oil and gas. Now we are drilling 10,000 meters A deep well is equivalent to looking for the "faucet" of the "oil dragon". It may be potentially 10,000 meters underground, or even deeper.

By finding the oil-generating layers buried deep underground, many geological problems in ultra-deep exploration will be easily solved. The Tarim Basin, located between the Kunlun Mountains in the Tianshan Mountains, is the largest oil and gas basin in my country. The vicissitudes of geological movements have caused oil and gas to be buried deep underground, and the deposits have formed oil and gas resource treasures.

Duan Yongxian, manager of PetroChina's Tarim Oilfield Exploration Division: The oil and natural gas resources in the Tarim Basin with a depth of 6,000 to 10,000 meters account for 83.2% and 63.9% of the total, respectively. In the past ten years, more than 1,000 ultra-deep wells have been drilled in the Tarim Oilfield, and 90% of the discovered oil and gas reserves come from deep strata.

The 560,000-square-kilometer Tarim Basin is rich in oil and gas reserves, accounting for more than half of the country's ultra-deep resources. In recent years, the Tarim Oilfield has discovered two trillion-cubic-meter atmospheric areas and a billion-ton large oil area here, building my country's largest ultra-deep oil and gas production base.

Will drilling a 10,000-meter-deep well affect the formation structure?

Going to the sky, entering the earth, going down to the sea, and climbing to the pole are feats for people to explore nature. To build a 10,000-meter-deep well requires drilling a hole more than ten kilometers underground. Will this hole change the stratigraphic structure and induce geological disasters?

Based on the changes in the propagation speed of seismic waves, people have determined that the internal structure of the earth is a concentric circle structure, which is divided into the core, mantle and crust from the center of the earth to the surface. Drilling a 10,000-meter-deep well is drilling into the earth's crust.

Huang Shaoying, senior expert at PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Exploration and Development Research Institute: Our country has previously conducted two deep reflection seismic profiles in the Tarim Basin to detect geological structures within a 200-kilometer range underground. The crustal thickness of the Tarim Basin was measured to be approximately 37 to 49 kilometers. The thickness of the crust in the area where our 10,000-meter deep well is located is about 40 kilometers. In other words, the 10,000 meters we drilled into the ground are only equivalent to a quarter of the thickness of the crust, which is equivalent to 637/637 of the radius of the earth. one. If the Earth were an egg, we would only have penetrated a quarter of the egg's skin.

In fact, wells 10,000 meters deep have been drilled in the world without any record of significant impact on the stratigraphic structure. my country's ultra-deep drilling practice has repeatedly confirmed that drilling will not induce geological disasters such as volcanic earthquakes.

Sun Jinsheng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering: At present, the deepest well in the world is the Soviet Union's Kola 3 well. Its depth is 12,262 meters. The thickness of the earth's crust is 30 kilometers and the radius of the earth is more than 6,300 kilometers. It will not affect the earth. internal structure. Moreover, oil fields are all porous structures distributed in regional blocks. Oil exists in these pores, holes and cracks. The pores and cracks are relatively small. Water injection is required to extract the oil later, and the density of water is higher than that of oil. The density is high and there will be no structural problems after filling.