In a breakthrough exploration of 250mn-year-old granite in South China, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) has completed the drilling of Fushen-1 Well in Hainan.
At 5,200 m, it is the deepest geothermal exploration well in China.
Started in last August, the company notes this as a milestone reached in less than a year.
This has been made possible by Sinopec's deployment of several independently developed innovative technologies, including the combination of dual-drive drilling and high-pression injection, to reach the temperature limit of hot dry rock stipulated by the national energy industry standards, while forming the key technologies of detection and evaluation of deep geothermal resources.
Sinopec's next steps will include extensive research and field tests at Fushen-1 Well, building the first platform that brings together research, education, and experimentation of deep geothermal in South China. This will help formulate theoretical methods and technical systems applicable to the region, paving the path towards the country's 'Dual-Carbon' goal.
China's geological surveys have revealed that the hot dry rock geothermal resources within the range of 3 kms to 10,000 m underground in China's land area are equivalent to 856 trillion tons of standard coal. Every 2% of them equals 2,993 times the annual energy consumption of China in 2023. The country has an accumulated geothermal heating capacity of nearly 100 mn sq m with several multi-million-square-meter regional geothermal heating projects already built and in operation.
