Xinjiang's Hade-Fuman Oilfield extracts over 26 million tons of oil and gas from ultra-deep reservoirs

Located in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Hade-Fuman Oilfield has extracted more than 26 million metric tons of oil and gas from reservoirs over 6,000 meters underground, according to China National Petroleum Corporation.

The oilfield's Zhentan-1 well on the northern edge of the Taklimakan Desert recently retrieved a rock core sample from a depth of 8,080 meters that had remained underground for about 500 million years. Source rocks contain organic matter that, when subjected to proper conditions of heat and pressure, is converted into hydrocarbons over millions of years, eventually producing petroleum and natural gas.

Xu Yanan, a staff member at CNPC's Tarim Oilfield, explained that the core allows the team to analyze and evaluate the hydrocarbon generation capacity below 8,000 meters, as well as the thickness of the reservoir and thermal maturity of the source rock.

He added that Tarim Oilfield has drilled 485 ultra-deep wells at the Hade-Fuman oilfield. Of these, 133 have each produced more than 100,000 tons of oil and gas, and 331 wells have produced more than 10,000 tons each, making Hade-Fuman the nation's largest desert oilfield and ultra-deep oil and gas production base.

Lu Zhongyuan, an engineer at Tarim Oilfield, said 20.36 million tons of crude oil and 8.15 billion cubic meters of natural gas have been extracted from ultra-deep formations in the Taklimakan Desert, with oil and gas equivalent exceeding 26.86 million tons. He added that proven oil and gas reserves in the Tarim Basin have exceeded 5 billion tons, with more than half from ultra-deep formations.

According to Tarim Oilfield, 270 of its ultra-deep wells have reached depths greater than 8,000 meters. The core equipment used to drill the Zhentan-1 well was independently developed in China.