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China Drills Into The "Roof Of The World" To Alleviate Foreign Dependence
Submitted by Rory Johnston via OilPrice.com,
From copper to iron to oil, China is the world’s leading importer of almost every raw mineral. Wary of the risks this dependence brings, Beijing is looking ever inward to exploit the mineral wealth of its interior, including the politically contentious and technically challenging Tibetan Plateau. The most recent development is a 7-kilometer deep borehole drilled by Chinese resource exploration teams. The exact location of the borehole, the deepest ever drilled at such a high altitude, as well as the companies involved in the exploration are being kept secret.
The Plateau is estimated to contain 30-40 million tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead and zinc, and billions of tons of high-grade iron ore—it is also estimated that the Plateau’s Qiangtang Basin contains upwards of 70 billion barrels of oil, potentially making it the largest such reserve on the planet. If these estimates are even remotely accurate, the rewards for Beijing will be enormous.
Via Quartz and the Tibetan Plateau Blog
The Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest plateau on Earth, with an average elevation of more than 4,500 meters above sea level. Mineral extraction faces a series of technical roadblocks if Beijing hopes to move these resources from the interior to the coast for refining and consumption.
"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 Professor Li Haibing, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Geological Services.
The high altitude makes oxygen scarcity a serious complication for workers, with even light work turning into a strenuous endeavour. Additionally, the Plateau is located thousands of kilometers from the industrialized coast and suffers a lack of basic infrastructure, let alone the complex framework required for large-scale extraction operations. Due to the technical difficulties of the region, the Tibetan Plateau is one of the last unexplored inland territories on the planet.
But this is not deterring Beijing. While Chinese SOEs have been in the area for over a decade (CNPC began exploring in 1995), there is a new push to see the region developed. Beijing is reviewing a proposal for a new “deep-earth” exploration project that was submitted by some of China’s most prominent geologists. As the name would imply, the project involves drilling more than 10 kilometers into the Plateau in order to obtain samples for study. Even if the samples are promising, development of these resources is going to be technically challenging and China does not have a good track record in this area—it has had difficulty tapping its vast shale gas deposits without the help of Western IOCs.
One point of concern that has been raised is the potential for water contamination. The Plateau is also known as the “water tower of Asia,” feeding many of the regions critical rivers as well as holding 30 percent of China’s freshwater resources. Develop these resources incorrectly, and it could negatively impact hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.
The Tibetan Plateau may be a mountain of money, but it’s too early to tell. Geological uncertainty, technical difficulty, water vulnerability, and politics all complicate production prospects. As Beijing chases self-sufficiency, we can only hope that they don’t cut corners.
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Panic after Chinese city declares tap water toxic - Telegraph
it would be ironic if all that oil we have extracted was used by the earth to function in some way, plate lubrication, vibration damping, dielectric. ect and we end up with a result that kills us all. if global warming doesn't do it..
China
“In 2012 the country's rivers pumped more than 17 million tons of pollution into its seas, according to official figures, including 46,000 tons of heavy metals.”
"it's seas"
Geez Louise.. a lot of the rest of us are Fuk ‘d,, or is that Fuku ‘d?
I think you'll find Poseidon has enormous respect for national boundaries. This is one of the reasons China is hoping to expand its claims in the China Sea southwards; so it has more ocean to pollute.
Actually "its" is being used as a possessive pronoun, therefore the author has it right. "It's" is a contraction for it is.
dear chinapeople:
7 km deep?
if you run into some of that abiotic stuff, do us all a favor and don't say anything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
hugs,
bp exxon etc
They have drilled deeper than that and found diddly-squat...
PS Did you read your little link outlining the evidence for any extracted oil being consistent with not being biological in orign?
thanks for the follow-up
my understanding is that the stakes involved are so very high that it would be imprudent to report a successful find
Why?
Seriously...
Sarah Barracuda just got sooooooo wet!
You heart in is in the right place, but oil don't function like that....
Just raise the safe limit 100-fold, and you'll be 80% under the limit. Pretty simple, really.
Worked in Japan, and they're a proper modern 'developed' country.
ROTFLMFAO !!!!
If this doesn't speak to Peak Cheap Energy.....nothing does. If we were SOOOOooooo awashed in easy to extract, relatively clean, light sweet crude, nobody.....not even the Chinese....would even remotely think about doing something so expensive....and quite frankly....stupid.
But...good luck. Might as well try since we are flooding their economy with our money and manufacturing. Too bad by the time they even come CLOSE to building the infrastructure to get that messy shit out of the ground....( a MONSTER sized if ).....the World wide economic system will have crashed and re-calibrated to a much less energy intensive position.
Oh.....and to Bill of Rights. Thanks for bringing up the benzene thing. I was surrounded from the time I was born through college years with pesticides and petroleum growing up around cotton plantations in Mississippi. I even worked out in the fields during high school for an entomoligist checking for the different pests that would plague the cotton plant through its various life stages from tiny shoot to open boll. Thrips, worms, plant bugs, and boll weevils, you name it.
From those collections at various points in the various fields, we would then make a report and tell the farmer what he was facing pest wise and what poison, if any, he had to lay down. We would always be talking to the farmer at the plantations surrounded by different barrels of pesticides which most are petroleum based, oil and diesel drums, kerosene and gasoline....some leaking on the ground. I got sprayed once or twice directly every year for 3 years by cropdusters. Not to mention, breathing in defolient.....which was probably Agent Orange early on in the 70's.
No wonder 16 years after that I developed Hodgkins Lymphoma. It was beaten after about a year of chemo and have been clean ever since....< knock on wood>.
But yeah.....benzene is a bitch.
Benzene is frack-tastic....
Yet another reason why we should frack in the NYC watershed....
There is a safer solution but few are considering it.
http://www.gasfrac.com/investors-overview.html
Flak is of course completely full of crap once again.
Benzine is a natural constituent of both some ground water aquifers and a normal component of crude oil and abundant in natural gas reservoirs.
Benzene in Groundwater Occurs Infrequently and Determined to be Mainly from Natural Sources
Released: 8/29/2012 1:30:00 PM
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3384
And, well, some first principles:
And the benzine you refer to as a frack fluid is the small component that's in the form of some diesel that's occasionally present in a frack fluid, or else is just present due to its natural ambient abundance in hydrocarbon deposits.
But it's such a terrible pollutant, and caused by fracking you say? If it was so bad, and we've been using it profusely since getting on to two centuries ago, then why are we living longer and longer?
Firstly you're dishonest, secondly you're an idiot, and thirdly you're deliberately spreading your warped hyperbolic anti-hydrocarbon disinfo pseudo-science horseshit once more.
How surprising. :-D
How about we start fracking in your back yard...
Are you going to volunteer for us?
Are New York or Washington D.C. on the opposite end of the World of that hole?
If so, please keep drilling.
The Highest Hole to bury the Deepest Debt?
Maybe they will fill the hole with melted gold...sorta like a giant filling in the worlds biggest molar.
The exact location of the borehole, the deepest ever drilled at such a high altitude, as well as the companies involved in the exploration are being kept secret.
Should be easy enough to see with satellite photos.
They can't do that. In that area, the Chinese BLM has a rare grasshopper that is on the endangered species list.
Why not just get the exclusive on the Free Tibet Tshirt sales...that could bring in billions
Water they're drilling a water pipe, when done they'll have thousands of miles of downhill hydroelectric potential, it's a brilliant strategy.
And yes people will be pissed at the theft of water.
Prediction, an aliance between Tibet and Islam is to oust chicoms, but not before the project is completed.
The Chinese are well ahead of the curve, by importing people they made sure the majority will be Han, so if there is a referendum they will vote to stay with China.
There's that "H" word again..
"...we can only hope that they don’t cut corners."
With as much material that's piled up into the Plateau that's probably the richest mineral lode on the planet.
But they'll find a way to fuck it up I'm sure.
Deep minerals are useless; you can't mine them, unless you plan on using robots or ROV or something. If they want the minerals in Tibet then this story should be about some gigantic new open pit adventure ripping up 6,000 vertical feet of rock for 6 miles in all directions.
All of what they mention, in industrial metals terms, is recoverable from the ocean bottom, without even digging for it, you can just scoop it up if you really want it. There's no lack of any of those metals. The lower the grade you mine the larger the resource base becomes (and what's on the ocean bottom is phenomenally high-grade).
What will occur is what's economic, and what is non-economic* will not make it to the planning stage, let alone development stage, let alone production stage.
* excluding all taxpayer subsidized wind-farms and solar panel boondoggles as these have a special dispensation from the Pope and are not required to ever pay for themselves, justify their general massive failure as base-load supplies, nor provide any return on investment, nor fund their own maintenance, or replacement cost ... but hey it's all good ... it's renewable ... and free!
Maybe the US can aid mining efforts by dropping a few loads of bunker busters on Mount Everest.
Just send them to West Virginia for a crash course in mountain top removal...
Actually they were supposed to install a flagpole but got the diagram upside-down, and now are simply afraid to stop and admit it.
Anyone know when the windy city road apple is going to approve the Keystone Pipeline
Why would you want to approve it?
I don't know, stupid shit, like jobs, and oil. That kind of stuff
So how many long term jobs?
Where do the refined products end up?
Do you think that the refiners will sell domestically at a discount to prevailing global prices?
Repeating mendacious crap from Fox News doesn't make it any truer...
(As that Charles Hugh-Smith guy has been screaming for weeks/months/years,) It appears the low-hanging fruits have indeed been picked.
I wonder how bad the net-energy and EROEI ratios are for these projects?
If what was needed was just laying on the surface, there really wouldn't be need for drilling in impossible locations, or fracking for that matter, or keeping entire regions destabalized on purpose, or killing people so that pipelines can be pushed through, and so on and so on.
Build a nuclear power plant up there. Done.
lol we need a guy like you in the Tasmanian Premier's job.
I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea to continue poisoning our water sources. Just a thought.
Not to worry, elites have stocked up on Perrier and Fiji water.
Just practicing for those Japanese Islands soon to be in China,s hand
Deep holes are usually about science. About answering the question what is down there? Is this drilling about science? If so then what kind of science?
The Russians had the Kola Superdeep borehole in the 70's. There was a really deep oil well (by now, maybe a few). But as a rule these things don't have much commercial use due to the expense.
This is kind of interesting.
What are they expecting to find?
It would probably be more efficient just to "mine" ghost cities, to get more materials, to build more ghost cities.
You mean like we do in America today? Yes exactly.
Half the streetlights in my neighborhood don't work because people "scavenging" copper have stripped the wire out of them. Stripped it out hot.
We're not even a ghost city, just really lax at every kind of enforcement.
That kind of shit has been going on for years. Around here, it's not the street lights, but the wires coming in providing service for businesses that gets stolen, and yes, it's almost always taken when the shit is hot. IMO, there are some electricians involved in a lot of cases. Otherwise, there would be a lot more electrocuted people at the theft sites.
Eventually this happens...
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEV0y6JUhT4BoAa3hXNy...
You should tape a joint to each lightpole so LEOs will start patrolling 24/7.
Yeah. Even given the price of Mary Jane it would probably pay off.
Fuckers won't come if you report a burglary. First thing they ask is "is the burglar in your home right now?" and if the answer is no then they tell you to contact your insurance adjuster.
However if a confused homeless guy is walking around with a piece of pipe he's shot on the spot. In the back.
Sorry, off topic there. But it kinda pisses me off. The redneck cops around here are sick-o.
You've got redneck cops, I've got commando cops. Sounds like the results are much the same. Aside from the homeless schizophrenic guy who was shot 3 or 4 weeks ago, there was the kid who happened to not be the suspect in something like a burglary or auto theft who was shot while the cop was hiding in the bushes, who after shooting him two or three times, walked up to him while he was lying on the ground bleeding and UN-FUCKING-ARMED and then plugged him in the chest, killing him. The kid had run from them for whatever reason, maybe because he was fucking scared because, you know, they're fucking cops. Or the guy who they shot in the back because he dared to turn around and walk back into his house holding a fucking *spoon*. Or the 60 year old drunk and unarmed guy who 47, yes 47 cops ganged up on because his drunk buddy got into an argument with him, and called the cops for whatever drunken reason. They tazed him, beanbagged him, sicced the dogs on him, and much of this after he was unconscious.
Like I say, this shit will come to a head, one way or another.
what's the root cause of the burglaries in your neighborhood?
sounds like people in your neighborhood don't give a shit about the lack of streetlights and/or don't pay (taxes) for regular maintenance delivered by the local commune.
The remnants of an ancient Sleestack city.
"The Cave of the Ancients" -- Lobsang Rampa
Orogenic belts (mountain ranges, both still standing and also weathered away) are all high geotherm areas. A couple of km down its hot even within an old stable cratonic crust mine but in an orogenic belt, especially an extremely young one that's actively rapidly rising (like the Himalayas), it's much too hot to mine deep for metals. Plus hydrocarbon reservoirs don't like heat as it tends to cook the oil into gas. Plus heavily dessicated and multiple folded sediments in actual mountain belts are bloody terrible for reservoir prospects. The more gently folded and far less faulted strata around the margins is where you find the larger (thus economic) shallow-depth and lower-temp range trap conditions.
I agree, this drilling is pure research, especially regional structural geology mapping, to better define the character of the regional orogenesis and its deformation sequences that are often explicitly decipherable from examination of the petrographic microfabrics of the minerals (like rotated garnet porphyroblasts) present within thin-sections of the rock.
https://www.google.com.au/images?q=rotated+garnet+porphyroblasts&oe=utf-...
www.researchgate.net/publication/230101503_Rotating_garnets/file/3deec52...
It's that level of knowledge you can then use to construct a national or regional or continental structural deformation model, from which you can them predict where various mineral and energy deposits will most likely be found. Actually knowing the deep structure of the area would be crucial to such a resource survey effort.
Long term, the average Chinaman is fucked. 1.3 Billion people + massive industrialization = massive environmental distruction. They're shitting where they eat.
Funniest, cleverest, title ever!
Build a refinery on Mt. Everest and call it a day.
It's not a mine. They're building ships...or maybe arks. I know this for a fact. The last time I took the kids to Yellowstone we met a guy named Charlie. He knew all about it.
"...The Plateau is estimated to contain 30-40 million tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead and zinc, and billions of tons of high-grade iron ore—it is also estimated that the Plateau’s Qiangtang Basin contains upwards of 70 billion barrels of oil, potentially making it the largest such reserve on the planet. ..."
And a trillion tons of bullshit that this fucking shit actually exists.
Because of course, those fucking Chinese communists never lie. Fucking rodents!!!!!!!!!!!
Goldman Sachs used almost the exact same approach to get huge sideline money rolling into tight oil and shale gas plays. Had nothing at all to do with the minerals of course, had everything to do with getting a new Ponzi scheme launched.
If anyone is now saying "we're drilling huge in Tibet, get in while it's cheap" I would immediately check and make sure my wallet is still on me, then leave the room by the quickest way out.
I thought Afghanistan was supposed to have trillions in metal resources...
Do you think it migrated across the Hindu Kush?
Everyone in comments seems to think Chinese are "way ahead" or "forward thinking" etc. etc. and yet, with all the chinese who work at my company [and there are a lot of them], not ONE..wants to go back to China. No ZH'er has indicated they would rather live in China either?? May be they are just too too too good for us normal people???
How are they getting all the minerals plus water out of 1 bore hole? Do I really need to at (sarcasm) at the end of the sentence?
If there are minerals there, then it is only a matter of time before they are extracted. The only thing that will delay development would be a change in the market price or a decline in the stability of the country. And that's just a delay, eventually it's going to happen.
The need for internal resources is something every government wants, and it was only a few years ago that people were trumpeting how sly the U.S. was in going overseas for their resources while saving the good stuff at home for when it was really needed. Not sure anyone ever thought of the grand plan for doing that, things were just cheaper overseas what with the labor and environmental costs of doing business in the U.S. I'd have to believe that development in China will be the same thing: it will happen if it is cost effective, but not until then. Why develop copper at $4.00 a pound when you can buy it at $3.00 (unless you're just trying to make jobs for people ... does any country still even lie about doing that?). I suppose China did build entire cities just to keep people busy and make the numbers look good. Think they'll start building mines for the same reason?
China does have a fairly large third world development (and by development I mean rape and pillage) program just to get access to resources outside of the Western pipeline. And they just signed that "change the world" gas deal with Russia. So perhaps they're just releasing stories on this to irritate the Dali Lama?
I say frack it now and kill off a billion people's water supply.
They drilled the hole so deep they almost hit China.
Can't be true, else the US would have started a civil war there by now...