During this National Day holiday, my country’s deepwater oil fields achieved new breakthroughs in oil production. Today, the cumulative crude oil production of the secondary development project of Liuhua Oilfield, my country’s first deepwater oil field, exceeded 2 million tons. Up to now, the oil field has produced more than 40 million tons of crude oil, and the daily output has reached a new high in the 22 years since it was put into operation, providing a solid guarantee for ensuring national energy security.
The most important weapons of the country, "Haiji No. 2" and "Hai Kui No. 1" operate in coordination
The Liuhua Oilfield secondary development project is located in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, with an average operating water depth of 305 meters. It relies on Asia's first deepwater jacket platform "Haiji No. 2", Asia's first cylindrical offshore oil and gas processing plant "Haikui No. 1" and the collaborative operation of underwater production systems. How can these two "important weapons of the country" with different shapes on the sea operate together safely and efficiently? Liuhua Oilfield handed over a "Chinese plan" for the operation and maintenance of large-scale deepwater facilities.
"Haikui No. 1" and "Haiji No. 2" are arranged in sequence, respectively responsible for production and processing, oil storage and export, and drilling and oil production functions. Relying on the integrated sea and land intelligent central control system, on-site operations more than 240 kilometers away are included in the unified monitoring of the Shenzhen land production control center.
Shu Zhengyong, director of CNOOC Liuhua Oilfield's "Haiji No. 2": In view of the frequent typhoons in the South China Sea and frequent internal wave currents in summer, the team equipped the two facilities with "typhoon mode production" functions and relied on remote control to maintain stable production. This intelligent management model has been applied 11 times, saving more than 50,000 tons of production losses and creating economic benefits of more than 170 million yuan.
Facility health operations and maintenance are also fully digitalized. The "Haiji-2" jacket integrates a digital twin system, a marine environment monitoring system and a seabed environment monitoring system to sense structural stress and seabed changes in real time, realizing the transformation of large deepwater facilities from "civil defense" to "intelligent defense".
CNOOC Liuhua Oilfield "Haikui No. 1" FPSO Outbound Transmission Supervision Xue Ting: Facing the frequent internal wave currents in the sea area, "Haikui No. 1" is equipped with a dedicated internal wave flow monitoring system, as well as multi-dimensional means such as radar monitoring and guard ship inspections. It monitors mooring tension and tanker position status in real time, enabling early risk prediction and rapid disposal of hidden dangers. The utilization rate of the annual export operation window reaches more than 90%.
Deep sea energy transportation system ensures efficient crude oil transportation
To develop deepwater oil fields, we must not only have the ability to safely extract crude oil, but also have the guarantee to transport it efficiently. CNOOC is accelerating the construction of an independent and controllable deep-sea energy transportation system and gradually opening up independent links for deep-water oil and gas export to provide solid support for ensuring national energy security.
Liuhua Oilfield is my country's first deepwater oil field. Asia's first cylindrical floating production, storage and offloading unit - "Hai Kui No. 1" in service here does not have the wind vane effect of conventional ship-type floating production, storage and offloading units. The space for posture adjustment is limited, and crude oil export faces huge challenges.
Chen Jingming, captain of CNOOC Beihai Shipping Co., Ltd.'s "Beihai Kailan" ship: Newly built special-purpose ships have long lead times and high investment costs. We carried out special modifications to the existing oil tanker "Beihai Kailan" and installed a bow loading system on a domestic conventional oil tanker for the first time. It only took 12 days to complete the dock construction, and the test delivery was completed one month ahead of schedule.
The modified "Beihai Pioneer" ship can transport up to 450,000 barrels of crude oil at a time. Up to now, a total of 52 oil lifting operations have been completed, transporting more than 2 million tons of crude oil. While adapting the ship's hardware, CNOOC has built an intelligent operation platform for oil and gas export to provide digital and intelligent support for the study and judgment of oil extraction timing, optimization of berthing plans, coordinated allocation of export resources, and response to special weather and sea conditions.
Yang Shuangwei, deputy general manager of CNOOC Development Sales and Service Company: The intelligent operation platform uses AI + big data technology to intelligently match more than 100 export ships. It currently covers 20 export terminals and sends more than 1,600 ship dispatching instructions throughout the year, providing strong support for the safe and efficient export of offshore crude oil.
