China's desert oilfield hits record: 8,080m deep core from 500m-year-old rock

China’s Fuman Oilfield in Xinjiang has extracted 26.86 million tons of oil and gas equivalent from ultra-deep formations beneath the Taklimakan Desert. Engineers also recovered rock cores from a record depth of 8,080 metres at the Zhentan-1 well. The rocks are estimated to have remained buried for about 500 million years, according to CNPC and CCTV.