China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) announced on Dec 7 that the Enping 15-1, Asia's largest offshore oil production platform, has been put into operation, marking completion of the first phase of the Enping 15-1 oil field cluster.
Also put into operation were facilities like Enping 10-2, the first unmanned platform in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, and China's first offshore carbon dioxide storage facility.
Operation of the facilities is of great significance to guaranteeing national energy security, boosting marine sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening and realizing China's "dual carbon" goals of peaking carbon dioxide by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.
Located in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, the Enping 15-1 oil field cluster is about 200 kilometers from Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province. It includes four new oil fields designed with 48 production wells. Once operational, the oil field cluster is expected to have a peak daily output of nearly 5,000 metric tons, and to become a driving force for the economic and social development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The Enping 15-1 platform is the most crucial offshore facility of the oil field cluster. It was independently designed, built and installed by CNOOC, which will also operate it.
The platform is about 160 meters high and weighs more than 30,000 tons. The area of a single layer of the deck equals that of 10 basketball courts. What's more, it is equipped with nearly 600 sets of devices and systems, twice as many as those of a conventional oil production platform, expanding its functions to include drilling and repairing wells, unmanned remote control, carbon dioxide recycling and storage, automated power generation and power networking, and comprehensive oil-gas-water treatment. It has the largest deck, the heaviest module, the most devices and the most numerous functions among offshore oil production platforms in Asia.
The Enping 10-2 platform is currently the smartest large-scale offshore unmanned platform in China. Its number of wells and crude oil treatment capacity equal that of a conventional human-operated platform. However, as the platform has no systems and facilities for human use, its weight and deck area are respectively only one-third and one-half the values of those of traditional platforms. Compared to traditional platforms, the Enping 10-2 platform also required about 280 million yuan (about $40.24 million) less investment and needs about 33 percent less maintenance and repairing work, cutting down operation and maintenance costs by more than 10 million yuan annually.
As the Enping 15-1 oil field cluster contains high levels of carbon dioxide, CNOOC joined hands with other Chinese enterprises and developed China's first supercritical macro-molecule compressor and its first composite material carbon dioxide molecular sieve skid-mounted dehydration unit, a breakthrough in domestically-made equipment for offshore carbon dioxide storage.
It's worth noting that the Enping 15-1 oil field cluster is equipped with China's first 7,600-kilowatt domestically-made crude oil generator unit, which cut down engineering investment by 68 million yuan and reduces annual maintenance costs by 30 percent.
The platform also applied China-developed central control and power distribution systems, used China-made umbilical cable for power, communication and chemical products transmission and adopted China-developed logging-while-drilling and rotary steerable drilling technologies, all of which were the first usages in Chinese offshore crude oil production platform construction.
CNOOC's application of China-developed offshore platform equipment has provided technological support to the country's improvement in oil and gas output and reserve exploration.
Enping 15-1, Asia's largest offshore oil production platform, is put into operation on Dec 7. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
A worker inspects the bottom deck of the Enping 15-1 platform. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
Workers operate the China-developed power distribution system on the offshore platform. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
The Enping 10-2, the first newly-built unmanned platform in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, is put into operation. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)
