China drills deepest high-altitude borehole for oil in Tibet

Chinese exploration teams have drilled a seven-kilometre-deep borehole in the resource-rich Himalayan region of Tibet, said to be the deepest such hole dug at extreme altitude for oil exploration.
The 7,000-metre borehole was drilled into the Tibetan Plateau, called the roof of the world, in a bid to tap the region's oil and natural gas resources, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported quoting Chinese engineers.
"It is the deepest borehole ever drilled at such extreme altitudes, according to mainland scientists who are following the project," the report said.
The world's deepest borehole, the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, was drilled to a depth of 12,262 metres by the former Soviet Union in 1980s.

Tibet's remoteness, thin air and lack of infrastructure have so far saved it from the unchecked exploration and extraction of fossil fuels and minerals but the Himalayan region can escape the hunt for oil and gas as the government wants to lessen the dependence on their imports, it said.
But the latest project is shrouded in secrecy.

Professor Li Haibing, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, would not reveal the project's location and declined to identify which state-owned oil companies were active in the region, the report said.
Li said Chinese government was reviewing a proposal for a new "deep-earth" exploration project "submitted by the nation's most prominent geologists" to drill wells more than 10 kilometres deep to obtain study samples, with Tibet being an area of the greatest interest.

"Tibet's altitude and geology make it among the world's most difficult drilling locations. Fragmented [geological] structures, prone to collapse, increase the risks," said Li.
Li, who led one of the largest scientific drilling projects in Tibet, and works for the academy's Institute of Geology, also noted that "oxygen scarcity at higher elevations drains workers' energy considerably".
China's handling of exploration of minerals as well as plans to efforts to build dozens of dams on the Brahmaputra and other rivers in Tibet has come under criticism from ecologists considering the fragile nature of the region.
Eighty-three workers were killed when a massive landslide with about two million cubic meters of mud engulfed Jiama Copper Gold Polymetallic Mine near Lhasa last year which was attributed to excessive mining.