China starts drilling Asia’s deepest oil, gas well

China has started to drill an 8,875-meter-deep well in southwestern Sichuan Province to explore an untapped underground oil and gas field, sources with Sinopec Corp. said on Saturday.

With an estimated investment of 300 million yuan (38.8 million U.S. dollars), the drilling of the well, named “Chuanke No.1 Well”, started in Mianzhu City in western Sichuan on March 20 and is expected to take 676 days to finish.