Nearly 9,000 meters deep: China’s ‘underground Everest’ to pump crude from Asia’s deepest oil well

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.

Light illuminates Mount Everest during sunset in Solukhumbu district also known as the Everest region, Nepal © Reuters / Navesh Chitrakar

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.

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