workover rig hand made in china

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Their exceptional mobility, stability, and ease of operation are the outcome of our extensive experience in the design and production of mobile drilling rigs.

Belonging to the same family, Sovonex™ service rigs comprise many of the technological advantages that result in smooth operation and make the life of our customers’ easier:

Wide selection: At our production facility in China we design and develop workover rigs for service depths ranging from 1,600 m to 8,500 m (5,250 ft-27,900 ft), and workover depths from 2,000 m to 9,000 m (6,600 ft-30,000 ft) for 2 7/8” DP.

Full API coverage: The different components of our well-servicing rigs are manufactured to the following API standards:Steel structures, such as the mast: API Spec 4F

Highly maneuverable : Sovonex™ mobile drilling rigs and self-propelled workover rigs possess excellent driving properties in the desert, mountain, and other impassable terrains.

Reduced NPT: The mast is erected hydraulically to reduce time for rig up and increase safety. Likewise, all rig components have been designed to allow for fast assembly and disassembly.

With every service rig, we send technical staff to our customer to provide first-hand technical support. The engineer responsible for the rig design is always part of the service crew.

Main Features Name: traveling hook Brand: KH Original: China Domestic famous fluid end, strong driving force, low fuel consumption, high economic benefits. Machine Parts Name: derrick platform Brand: KH Original: China Domestic famous, strong driving force, low fuel consumption, high economic benefits. After-Sales Service * Training how to instal the machine, training how to use the machine.

About products and suppliers:Alibaba.com offers 224 workover rig manufacturing products. About 49% % of these are oilfield drilling rig, 29%% are mine drilling rig.

A wide variety of workover rig manufacturing options are available to you, You can also choose from diesel, electric and gasoline workover rig manufacturing,As well as from energy & mining, construction works , and manufacturing plant. and whether workover rig manufacturing is unavailable, 2 years, or 6 months.

As a China top oil drilling rig solids control system manufacturer: GN Solids Control now list the top 10 oil drilling rig manufacturers for your reference.

equipment in China, is the earliest established, largest and most powerful oil drilling rig and production equipment developer and manufacturer under CNPC, the largest research and production base of land rigs and series mud pumps in the world, and also the largest and most powerful base for R&D and production of wire ropes for special purposes in China.

Lanzhou LS-National Oilwell Petroleum Engineering Co. Ltd. (LS-NOW for short) is a Sino-American Joint Venture established between Lanzhou Petrochemical Machinery Equipment and Engineering Group Corporation (LS Group) and National Oilwell International, Inc. (NOI). Scope of business: design, develop and manufacture complete land and offshore drilling rigs and workover rigs, and provide equipment package, components, fittings, parts and full services.

Main products: serial drilling rigs that are electrical or mechanical or electrical-mechanical compounded driven and suitable for different applications such as land, shallow, offshore and desert and meet the requirements of drilling and workover services. The drilling depth ranged from 1000 to 9000 meters.

Sichuan Honghua Petroleum Equipment Co., Ltd., established in 1997, is a subsidiary of Honghua Group which has been listed successfully in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The company has been engaged in research, design, manufacturing and general assembly of oil drilling rig and equipments for oil exploration and development. Now it is the world’s second land drilling rig manufacturer, and China ‘s largest exporter of drilling rigs.

The company owns five subsidiaries totally in home and abroad, with 3600 employees. Company headquarter is located in Deyang City, Sichuan, a heavy-duty equipment base in China, which covers an area of about 1,000 mus, and with more than 2,200 employees, annual output of 150 drilling rigs and 600 mud pumps etc. Its production capacity is up to 8 billion RMB production scale.

The company produces mainly various land drilling rigs for drilling 1000m to 9000m wells and offshore drilling modules– DC drive drilling rig, AC VF electric rig, mechanical drilling rig, composite drive rig, trailer mounted rig and independent RT electric drive drilling rig, as well as their matched equipments, i.e. drilling pumps, traveling block system, solid control system, electric control system etc.

RG PETRO-MACHINERY (GROUP) CO. LTD is one of the largest manufacturers for petroleum drilling rig equipment in China. It is a stock company, reorganized from Nanyang petroleum machinery plant (former No.2 Petroleum Machinery Manufacturing Plant of National Petroleum Industrial Ministry of China). As a former national technical equipment production base, authorized by former national economic and commercial committee of China, RG PETRO-MACHINERY (GROUP) CO. LTD has become a company for national new product trial production of China, light-duty drilling rigs production base of SINOPEC and a high-tech enterprise in Henan Province.

RG PETRO-MACHINERY (GROUP) CO. LTD, with its technical center, information center and quality inspection center at provincial level, has possessed 16 production plants for forging, metal machining, heat treatment, steel-structure manufacturing, general assembly, painting and new product trial production, and 3 comprehensive testing sites for drilling rigs as well as 2 Sino-American joint ventures and 2 share-holding joint ventures.

SJ Petroleum Machinery Co. , one of petroleum drilling  rig and production equipment backbone manufacturers and Manufacturing Base for National Key Equipment (Workover, Cementing and Fracturing Equipment) recognized by National Economy and Trade Commission, has provided lots of advanced equipment to domestic customers in lieu of expensive imported equipment, and played an important role in increasing profits of petroleum industry and decreasing domestic oilfield development cost.

Our company Shandong Kerui Holding Group is located in Shengli Oilfield the second largest oilfield in China. Our company arranges a wide range of businesses covering the scientific research and manufacture of the petroleum drilling equipment and oilfield engineering technical service. The main products manufactured and supplied include drilling equipment, Oil pumping equipment, Special equipment for oilfield, Oilfield tubing system and auxiliary machines and tools. We can manufacture various workover rigs and drilling rigs with drill depth from 3000m to 9000m. All products meet API standard. Our company has been granted API Certificate, ISO 9001: 2000 Quality System Certificate, HSE Certificate, and also got International Petroleum Engineering Management qualification certificate issued by the Ministry of Commerce of China.

The main products manufactured and supplied include oil drilling rig equipment, Oil pumping equipment, Special equipment for oilfield, Oilfield tubing system and auxiliary machines and tools. We can manufacture various workover rigs and drilling rigs with drill depth from 3000m to 9000m. All products meet API standard. Our company has been granted API Certificate, ISO 9001: 2000 Quality System Certificate, HSE Certificate, and also got International Petroleum Engineering Management qualification certificate issued by the Ministry of Commerce of China

(shanghai) petroleum equipment co., ltd. is established on august 2001. the 3h is the first rig manufacturer that introduces ship-building technology to the fabrication of petroleum equipment.

Shengli Oilfield Highland Petroleum Equipment Co., Ltd Established in 1992 was a private incorporated manufacturer of petroleum equipments located in Dongying city, Shandong province, the PRC. Through many years development, the company had been recognized and become well-known in petroleum industry achieved the superior position in the field of scale, product quality, technology ensuring and selling service and so on in petroleum equipment manufacturing in China. It possesses 3.5 billion RMB of total assets, owns more than 1,980 thousand square meters of plant area, China’s state-approved high-tech enterprise, China’s patent star enterprise, Shandong Province top 100 and excellent enterprise, Shandong Province unique petroleum equipment R & D center and over 370 engineers and technicians and 150 contracted noted specialists in ceeusro field.

Drilling Rig: Highland Company Drilling Rig Plant has advanced key facilities and assembly workshops for manufacturing rigs and it has enough test sites for assembling 12 sets of large scale drilling rigs at the same time，5 series (ZJ20~ZJ70, including 18 types) of drilling rigs have been developed and manufactured. These developed and manufactured products consist of mechanical drive, DC driven, AC VF drive and Electromechnical drilling rigs, which can handle the well with depth of 1500- 7000m in most of the large oilfields both at home and overseas.

Tensions between China and Vietnam over the disputed South China Sea are at their highest levels in years. On May 2, the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) placed its deep sea drilling rig HD-981 in disputed waters south of the Paracel Islands. Vietnam objected to the placement, declaring that the rig is located on its continental shelf. China has since sent approximately 80 ships, including seven military vessels, along with aircraft to support the rig. In response, Hanoi dispatched 29 ships to attempt to disrupt the rig’s placement and operations.

The implications of these developments are significant. The fact that the Chinese moved ahead in placing their rig immediately after President Obama’s visit to four Asian countries in late April underlines Beijing’s commitment to test the resolve of Vietnam, its ASEAN neighbors and Washington. Beijing may also be attempting to substantially change the facts on the seas by moving while it perceives Washington to be distracted by Russian aggression inUkraine, developments in Nigeria, and Syria. If China believes Washington is distracted, in an increasingly insular and isolationist mood and unwilling to back up relatively strong security assertions made to Japan and the Philippines and repeated during President Obama’s trip, these developments south of the Paracel Islands could have long term regional and global consequences.

A1:The war of words between Beijing and Hanoi has largely focused on the status of the area where HD-981 was placed. Vietnamese officials insist that it lies on their continental shelf, where according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), Vietnam has exclusive rights to all mineral and hydrocarbon resources.

The rig was placed near the edge of two hydrocarbon blocks already created by Hanoi, though not yet offered for exploitation to foreign oil and gas companies. It also sits near blocks 118 and 119, where U.S.-based ExxonMobil discovered substantial oil and gas reserves in 2011 and 2012. In 2013, Exxon and Vietnam’s state-owned PetroVietnam announced plans to build a $20 billion power plant to be fueled by the oil and gas from those blocks. Those discoveries help explain why CNOOC chose to place HD-981 nearby.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded to Vietnam’s complaints by insisting that the rig was placed “completely within the waters of China"s Paracel Islands.” This presumably refers to the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone and continental shelf that those islands—which are occupied by China but claimed by Vietnam—would generate under UNCLOS if they met certain requirements.

Hanoi, on the other hand, has restricted its oil and gas activities in the area to those fields, like blocks 118 and 119, that lie outside the maximum area of legal dispute.

A3:The deployment of HD-981, which Beijing insists will remain in place until August 15, has clearly ratcheted China-Vietnam tensions to a new level. Hanoi seems determined to disrupt the rig’s operations. And, in contrast to the Philippines, it has the capabilities—Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and an outdated but sizeable surface and air fleet—to do so. This means there is a real threat that acts of brinksmanship, like the recent ramming of Vietnamese vessels, could escalate quickly. Vietnam’s neighbors and outside partners like the United States must use every available channel to urge caution on both sides.

On the other hand, Vietnam’s relative naval capabilities will likely help temper Chinese assertiveness. After all, despite the presence of Chinese naval vessels around HD-981, it appeared that only Chinese Coast Guard vessels were involved in harassing and deterring Vietnamese ships attempting to enter the waters around the rig. The two nations’ and their leaders are as familiar with each other as anyone in the Asia Pacific, and they have substantial channels for communications, including top-level naval hotlines. This could also help avoid a larger crisis.

Vietnam has already launched a diplomatic campaign to build support abroad and paint China as the aggressor. Given other recent provocations by China against its neighbors, this will prove easy. This weekend, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung will join his fellow leaders from across Southeast Asia at the ASEAN Summit. The placement of the drilling rig, along with China’s patrols at Malaysia’s James Shoal earlier this year and attempts to block resupply of Philippine troops at Second Thomas Shoal in March, will ensure that the South China Sea disputes take center stage. There is no telling who will blink first in the stand-off over HD-981, but the one thing that is certain is that China’s newest provocation will further heighten the threat perception among ASEAN states and drive them closer to each other and interested outside parties, especially Japan and the United States.

The automatic workover rig is a new type of wellhead operation automation equipment developed for the lifting and lowering of oil pipes (sucker rods) in small oil and water well repair operations.

The automatic workover rig has made major breakthroughs in key technologies such as unmanned automatic operation at the wellhead, automatic pipe and rod transfer, electro-hydraulic servo control, and man-machine synchronization control. Various performance indicators have been verified by a large number of field tests.

At present, although some oilfield workover operations have adopted some automatic equipment, the unmanned operation of the wellhead has been realized, which has greatly reduced the labor intensity of workers, improved the operating environment, and improved the safety factor. But the tubing cannot swing with the pipe pusher when working in windy weather, the pipe pusher cannot accurately align the tubing with the coupling, which affects the reliability and stability of the automated operation. At the same time, there are many equipment movement mechanisms, which are distributed around the wellhead, resulting in manual intervention in the operation space, especially in the wellhead emergency rescue process, which will affect the efficiency of emergency rescue.

For the above disadvantages, Sanjack Company provides an automatic wellhead operation device for oilfield workover operations, which mainly realizes the accurate alignment of tubing couplings, improves the reliability and stability of automated operations, and secondly, through innovative design and reasonable layout of the components of the workover platform, the platform operation space is increased, which is convenient for manual operation and wellhead rescue operations.

The automatic wellhead operation device for automatic workover operation adopts the principle of electro-permanent magnet suction pipe, and design a set of mechanism that can swing freely under its own gravity to achieve accurate alignment of the tubing.

This automatic wellhead operation device improves the reliability and stability of automated operations. At the same time, through the innovative design and reasonable layout of the components of the workover platform, the structure is compact and simple, which increases the platform operation space and facilitates manual operation and wellhead rescue operations. Accurate movement positioning achieves precise and reliable workover.

(1) This device is based on the power and lifting conditions of the existing workover rigs. Through the hydraulic control transformation of elevators and hydraulic clamps, the development of automatic positioning manipulators and manipulators, and the selection of pneumatic chucks, the workover workers can be far away from the wellhead. The completion of the lifting and lowering of the tubing operation, the construction speed is artificially controllable and can reach the level of manual operation, which greatly reduces the labor intensity of the workers, and reduces the various injuries faced by the workers at the wellhead of the station, which is generally welcomed by the workers on the spot.

(4) After the two-person operation of the oil pipe is realized, the original wellhead personnel is trained as the driver, and the vehicle is operated in turn, which can further improve the work efficiency.

(5) After unmanned operation at the wellhead, the manipulator of the workover rig moves more. Therefore, simplifying operations and improving work efficiency through automation and intelligence is the next development direction of this device.

Sinopec SJ Petro well-workover rig truck SJX5470TXJ550 (batch #16) is made in China by Jianghan Petroleum Administration Fourth Machinery Factory. The company is located in Jingzhou, in Hubei Province, China.

This article is about the onshore oil rig. For offshore oil rig, see Oil platform. For drilling tunnels, see Tunnel boring machine. For handheld drilling tool, see Drill.

A drilling rig is an integrated system that drills wells, such as oil or water wells, in the earth"s subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill water wells, oil wells, or natural gas extraction wells, or they can be small enough to be moved manually by one person and such are called augers. Drilling rigs can sample subsurface mineral deposits, test rock, soil and groundwater physical properties, and also can be used to install sub-surface fabrications, such as underground utilities, instrumentation, tunnels or wells. Drilling rigs can be mobile equipment mounted on trucks, tracks or trailers, or more permanent land or marine-based structures (such as oil platforms, commonly called "offshore oil rigs" even if they don"t contain a drilling rig). The term "rig" therefore generally refers to the complex equipment that is used to penetrate the surface of the Earth"s crust.

Small to medium-sized drilling rigs are mobile, such as those used in mineral exploration drilling, blast-hole, water wells and environmental investigations. Larger rigs are capable of drilling through thousands of metres of the Earth"s crust, using large "mud pumps" to circulate drilling mud (slurry) through the drill bit and up the casing annulus, for cooling and removing the "cuttings" while a well is drilled. Hoists in the rig can lift hundreds of tons of pipe. Other equipment can force acid or sand into reservoirs to facilitate extraction of the oil or natural gas; and in remote locations there can be permanent living accommodation and catering for crews (which may be more than a hundred). Marine rigs may operate thousands of miles distant from the supply base with infrequent crew rotation or cycle.

Antique drilling rig now on display at Western History Museum in Lingle, Wyoming. It was used to drill many water wells in that area—many of those wells are still in use.

Until internal combustion engines were developed in the late 19th century, the main method for drilling rock was muscle power of man or animal. The technique of oil drilling through percussion or rotary drilling has its origins dating back to the ancient Chinese Han Dynasty in 100 BC, where percussion drilling was used to extract natural gas in the Sichuan province.Edwin Drake to drill Pennsylvania"s first oil well in 1859 using small steam engines to power the drilling process rather than by human muscle.Cable tool drilling was developed in ancient China and was used for drilling brine wells. The salt domes also held natural gas, which some wells produced and which was used for evaporation of the brine.

Oil and natural gas drilling rigs are used not only to identify geologic reservoirs, but also used to create holes that allow the extraction of oil or natural gas from those reservoirs. Primarily in onshore oil and gas fields once a well has been drilled, the drilling rig will be moved off of the well and a service rig (a smaller rig) that is purpose-built for completions will be moved on to the well to get the well on line.

Mining drilling rigs are used for two main purposes, exploration drilling which aims to identify the location and quality of a mineral, and production drilling, used in the production-cycle for mining. Drilling rigs used for rock blasting for surface mines vary in size dependent on the size of the hole desired, and is typically classified into smaller pre-split and larger production holes. Underground mining (hard rock) uses a variety of drill rigs dependent on the desired purpose, such as production, bolting, cabling, and tunnelling.

In early oil exploration, drilling rigs were semi-permanent in nature and the derricks were often built on site and left in place after the completion of the well. In more recent times drilling rigs are expensive custom-built machines that can be moved from well to well. Some light duty drilling rigs are like a mobile crane and are more usually used to drill water wells. Larger land rigs must be broken apart into sections and loads to move to a new place, a process which can often take weeks.

Small mobile drilling rigs are also used to drill or bore piles. Rigs can range from 100 short tons (91,000 kg) continuous flight auger (CFA) rigs to small air powered rigs used to drill holes in quarries, etc. These rigs use the same technology and equipment as the oil drilling rigs, just on a smaller scale.

An automated drill rig (ADR) is an automated full-sized walking land-based drill rig that drills long lateral sections in horizontal wells for the oil and gas industry.Athabasca oil sands. According to the "Oil Patch Daily News", "Each rig will generate 50,000 man-hours of work during the construction phase and upon completion, each operating rig will directly and indirectly employ more than 100 workers." Compared to conventional drilling rigs", Ensign, an international oilfield services contractor based in Calgary, Alberta, that makes ADRs claims that they are "safer to operate, have "enhanced controls intelligence," "reduced environmental footprint, quick mobility and advanced communications between field and office."steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) applications was mobilized by Deer Creek Energy Limited, a Calgary-based oilsands company.

Baars, D.L.; Watney, W.L.; Steeples, D.W.; Brostuen, E.A (1989). Petroleum; a primer for Kansas (Educational Series, no. 7 ed.). Kansas Geological Survey. p. 40. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 18 April 2011. After the cementing of the casing has been completed, the drilling rig, equipment, and materials are removed from the drill site. A smaller rig, known as a workover rig or completion rig, is moved over the well bore. The smaller rig is used for the remaining completion operations.

"Ensign Launches Newest And Most Powerful Automated ADR 1500S Pad Drill Rigs In Montney Play", New Tech Magazine, Calgary, Alberta, 21 November 2014, archived from the original on 10 December 2014, retrieved 6 December 2014

SHANGHAI/HANOI (Reuters) - A Chinese oil rig has finished drilling near the disputed Paracel islands in the South China Sea after finding signs of oil and gas and is being moved away from the area, more than two months after its deployment damaged relations with Hanoi.Chinese ships are seen on the horizon guarding the Haiyang Shiyou 981, known in Vietnam as HD-981, oil rig (2nd R) in the South China Sea, July 15, 2014. REUTERS/Martin Petty

The Vietnamese coastguard said the $1-billion rig had been towed from contested waters. China’s official Xinhua news agency said the rig would be relocated off the southernmost island province of Hainan. It gave no timeframe.

The rig’s relocation could reduce tensions between the two neighbours after one of the worst breakdowns in ties since they fought a brief war in 1979.

Its movement toward Hainan is also likely to be welcomed by Washington, which had criticised China’s decision to put the rig in waters disputed with Vietnam, calling it a “provocative” act.

Hanoi had said the rig was in its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf. Beijing had said it was operating completely within its waters around the Paracel islands, which China occupies.

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the country’s dominant oil and gas producer, said in a statement the rig “smoothly completed” its drilling on Tuesday and found signs of oil and gas. The next step would be to analyse the geological data and evaluate the layers of oil and gas, it said.

China had previously said the rig was scheduled to explore the waters around the Paracels until mid-August. It was not clear why it had finished one month ahead of schedule, although Xinhua said July was the beginning of the typhoon season.

Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, a Chinese government think tank on Hainan, said he believed the rig completed its work ahead of schedule because of good weather before the typhoon season began. “The place has fairly good oil and gas potential. It looks promising,” said Wu, an expert on China’s energy ambitions in the South China Sea.

The rig was towed from its original position overnight to beyond what Hanoi considers its exclusive economic zone, Lieutenant-Colonel Ngo Minh Tung of the Vietnamese coastguard told a small group of reporters on one of the maritime agency’s ships in the area.

On Tuesday, the same coastguard vessel was chased off by a group of Chinese ships in what had been a near daily cat-and-mouse routine between boats from both sides since the rig was deployed on May 2. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung demanded that China not send any more rigs into Vietnamese waters.

The deployment was a major test for Dung, especially when deadly anti-Chinese riots broke out in Vietnam in May, triggering protests from China. Several people were killed.

It is China’s newest and most advanced rig, and can drill in waters up to 3,000 m (9,840 ft) deep, about double that of the other two rigs China uses for deep sea work, industry sources say.

Chinese industry experts have said the rig had a good chance of finding enough gas to put the area into production. That would give China its first viable energy field in the disputed South China Sea, but make it a source of friction with Hanoi for years to come.

Vietnam has two fields to the left of where the rig had been stationed, much closer to its coast, where U.S. giant Exxon Mobil Corp discovered oil and gas in 2011 and 2012.

Naturally, with such attractive conditions for human habitation, Sichuan has been occupied by humans since the early dawn of our existence. The countryside has been worked by the human hand for so long, that it is hard to spot a single wild area in the basin proper. Even steep hillsides are terraced for farming, and ancient family crypts hewn into rock cliff outcrops can be spotted frequently from the highway. The contrast between the luxury cars speeding along the modern 6-lane highways, and the ancient terraces, tombs and irrigation systems is startling, but one can easily imagine one long continuous evolution of human technology here, from thousands and thousands of years ago, to the present. Many of China’s ancient technical accomplishments came from this region, including sophisticated irrigation techniques, and what I am particularly interested in, their drilling technology.

At some point around 2,000 years ago the leap from hand and shovel dug wells to percussively drilled ones was made (figure 4). By the beginning of the 3rd century AD, wells were being drilled up to 140m deep. The drilling technique used can still be seen in China today, when rural farmers drill water wells. The drill bit is made of iron, the pipe bamboo. The rig is constructed from bamboo; one or more men stands on a wooden plank lever, much like a seesaw, and this lifts up the drill stem a metre or so. The pipe is allowed to drop, and the drill bit crashes down into the rock, pulverizing it. Inch by inch, month by month, the drilling slowly progresses. It has been speculated that percussive drilling was derived from the pounding of rice into rice flour. When I read of this technique in Salt, I imagined a fairly crude technology. I had no idea how sophisticated these drilling methods became, to the point where these people really had developed most of the tools and techniques one might see on a modern drilling rig, albeit on a smaller scale and without the benefits of modern machining methods.

The drilling method on its own is impressive, especially when considering that the rest of the world had nothing comparable in the earlier centuries. But even more impressive are all the techniques the Sichuan drillers developed to overcome common drilling problems – cave ins, lost tools, deviated wells, and so on (figures 5 & 6). A huge variety of tools and techniques evolved to handle well repair issues (figure 7). Many different drill bits were also developed, with different sizes, shapes and compositions, to deal with the different rock types encountered, and the many different drilling requirements. For example, opening the hole at the wellhead required a large heavy bit (3m long, 150-250 Kg) called the “Fish Tail” (figure 8); the “Silver Ingot” drilled the well bore rapidly, but roughly; the “Horseshoe” bit drilled slowly, but achieved round, smooth, high quality well bores. Hollow logs were used in the near surface as casing.

Figure 13. An ancient sketch originally fro m "The Annals of Salt Law of Sichuan Province". A "Kang Pen" drum is seen in the centre foreground, with gas pipes directly feeding the salt stoves on the right. At the top, brine from a remote well is being carried in buckets by men, who feed it into a bamboo pipeline that runs down to the stoves. One of the carriers is being paid at top left, and it appears that a blow out is depicted on a new well being drilled in the left foreground; maybe the men operating the drill rig have run away, as tragically happened at a Chongqing, Sichuan sour gas well, late 2003.

My brief visit to Sichuan left me intrigued, fascinated, and eager to learn more about China’s ancient technical accomplishments. I can highly recommend the region as a place to visit, not only for its interesting historical sites, but also for its natural beauty (most of Sichuan is mountainous and unpopulated, especially the west, with bamboo forests, and panda bears), its rich culture with many interesting ethnic minorities, its delicious food, great shopping, and its wonderful, friendly people. However, the highlight of my trip was the visit to the Salt Museum, and I hope I have passed on my enthusiasm for this topic to readers.