China's self-developed 12,000-meter automated drilling rig, the first of its kind the world, facilitated the drilling of the deepest vertical well in Asia, which is also the second deepest in the world.
Located in the heart of the Taklimakan Desert in the Tarim Basin, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the well, known as "Shenditake 1," was completed in Feburary, with a borehole reaching a depth of 10,910 meters.
Developed by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the 82-meter high automated drilling rig is equipped with a 6,000-horsepower drilling winch, the country's largest, realizing 900 tons of load capacity.
"Our self-developed super-large load lifting system can easily meet the ultra-deep and overweight challenges faced by ultra-deep well drilling. In addition, we have independently developed an intelligent control system of the rig, equipped with a full set of automatic wellhead operation equipment and other advanced equipment, thus realizing automatic and intelligent drilling operations," said Li Yahui, chief designer of the "Shenditake 1" drilling rig.
The rig is equipped with an automated string handling system, allowing the drill pipe to lift or drill down freely thanks to the collaboration of robotic arms and intelligent algorithms.
In addition, the rig's monitoring system can transmit 48 key parameters such as downhole temperature and pressure in real time, providing accurate data support for the decision-making system.
"The drilling rig has overcome the bottlenecks of core components such as 900 tons of load capacity and 70MPa ultra-high pressure drilling fluid circulation system, promoting the lifting capacity and drilling fluid pumping capacity to make major strides, and realizing the autonomous control of the entire process of high-end drilling rig design and manufacturing," said Sun Jinsheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).
Drilling began on May 30, 2023. It took over 580 days to complete the 10,910-meter drilling, with more than half of the time -- some 300 days --- spent on the final 910 meters, according to CNPC.
Beyond oil and gas exploration, "Shenditake 1" has provided Asia's first 10,000-meter-deep core samples, offering invaluable data for fundamental research in geology, geochemistry and geothermal studies
China's self-developed automated drilling rig sinks Asia's deepest vertical well
The escalating trade measures taken by U.S. President Donald Trump have created huge uncertainty in international trade, dented world economic growth and will only serve to harm the interests of all parties concerned, a Polish economist has warned.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has been pushing his so-called "America First" agenda by threatening a new trade war against multiple countries. He has already introduced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada - with some exemptions - and brought in a 20 percent levy on Chinese goods.
Last Wednesday, the U.S. imposed a 25-percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports from around the world, prompting the European Union (EU) to take countermeasures.
Trump then threatened to impose a "200 percent tariff" on alcohol from EU countries unless the 27-nation bloc scrapped its planned 50-percent tariff on U.S. whiskey.
Highlighting Trump's seemingly unpredictable nature, Lukasz Goczek, a professor at the Department of Macroeconomics and Theory of Foreign Trade with University of Warsaw, warned the tariffs could have a destabilizing effect which may upend global trade.
"He (Trump) imposes a lot of uncertainties on international trade and, in general, international trade is good for all of us. So what's bad for international trade means it's bad for all of us," he said.
Goczek said another round of the tit-for-tat tariffs which persisted during Trump's first term in office has discouraged businesses and hampered investment around the globe.
"On one hand, Donald Trump proposes a lot of uncertainty to the system and uncertainty is always bad for business. And on the other hand, he's like constantly going back and forth, backtracking, and he's always subject to retaliation by his partners. So it makes it very difficult to actually understand where this is going," he said.
As other countries choose to hit back with high tariffs on American goods, Goczek said Trump's overall tariff strategy could backfire as these retaliatory moves will inflict significant harm on the U.S. economy, adding there will ultimately be no winners from such a trade war.
"The European Union has a big surplus in terms of goods with the U.S. It has a large negative account in terms of services, so when it comes to services like the big tech giants like Google, Apple and so on, they tend to sell us a lot of their services. And in service terms, we have a debt that's almost as large as the surplus in goods. So if Donald Trump wants to get rid of our goods from their markets, we can do the same and get rid of American services, and obviously it's something that we will both lose," he said.
US tariffs create business uncertainty, lead to lose-lose situation: Polish expert
