China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation ('Sinopec') has successfully completed the drilling of China's deepest geothermal exploration well, the Fushen-1 well in Hainan with a well depth of 5,200 meters. The milestone has revealed the mechanism of deep geothermal formation and enrichment in South China, the new breakthrough in the exploration of hot dry rock in terms of demographic region and depth is of great significance to enhance the large-scale development and utilization of geothermal resources in South China and aid the energy structure adjustment.
The drilling goal of Fushen-1 Well is granite dated 250 million years ago. Since the exploration was launched in August 2023, Sinopec has adopted multiple 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.
Next, Sinopec will carry out extensive research and field tests at Fushen-1 Well to establish the first platform integrating research, education, and experimentation of deep geothermal in South China, and explore to formulate theoretical methods and technical systems applicable to the region and help China to achieve the 'Dual-Carbon' goal.
The development and application of deep geothermal has promising prospects, as a stable, reliable, green, and low-carbon renewable energy resource, it has the advantages of large reserves, wide distribution, and is environmentally friendly. According to the China's geological surveys, the hot dry rock geothermal resources within the range of 3 kilometers to 10,000 meters underground in China's land area are equivalent to 856 trillion tons of standard coal, and if only 2 percent of them are extracted, they can reach 2,993 times the annual energy consumption of China in 2023.
Sinopec is committed to become China's leading enterprise in the development and utilization of geothermal energy. It has an accumulated geothermal heating capacity of nearly 100 million square meters with several multi-million-square-meter regional geothermal heating projects already built and in operation.
Sinopec has tackled a series of core technologies to achieve high-efficiency exploration, and has taken the lead to produce over 50 percent of industry standards as well as China's first international geothermal association standard. In 2023, Sinopec also hosted the 7th World Geothermal Congress (WGC2023) in Beijing.
Source: Sinopec
