China’s Fuman Oilfield, largest desert oilfield, extracts 26.86 million tons of oil and gas from below 6,000 metres; engineers recover 500-million-year-old rock core from record 8,080-metre depth in X

Engineers at China’s Fuman Oilfield recovered rock cores from a record depth of 8,080 metres beneath the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang. (Photo: China Media Group) China’s largest desert oilfield has extracted more than 26 million tons of oil and gas from ultra-deep formations beneath the Taklimakan Desert, marking a major milestone in the country’s push to tap increasingly difficult underground reserves. The Fuman Oilfield, located on the northern edge of the Taklimakan Desert in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, has produced a combined 26.86 million tons of oil and gas equivalent, according to China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), which…