[China] Liuhua 16-2 FPSO Hai yang Shi You 119

[escveritas]

China's FPSO with Largest Operation Depth Undersea Delivered
Updated: 2020-05-27



The Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) plant at the Liuhua 16-2 oilfield cluster at the Pearl River mouth basin in the South China Sea was recently delivered and given its own name: "HAI YANG SHI YOU 119".

The Liuhua 16-2 oilfield cluster is China's first domestic-support deepwater oil and gas project.

The FPSO, an offshore oil and gas processing plant, integrates varieties of functions including oil and gas production and processing, storage and export, and has its own living facilities and power supply. Most Chinese FPSOs are deployed in the South China Sea and the Bohai Sea.

It is called "a pearl in the crown" as it is highly-integrated and expansive and was difficult to build.

Developed by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the FPSO platform has the deepest operation depth of its kind in China.

With 26 sets of underwater wells and Christmas trees under operation, it has the most complicated offshore oil and gas processing technology. It can process 21,000 cubic meters of crude oil and 540,000 cubic meters of natural gas daily. The capacity equals that of an inland oil and gas processing plant covering 300,000 square meters.

The main body of HAI YANG SHI YOU 119 is about 256 meters long and 49 meters wide. Its deck is as large as two standard football pitches. Set up on the deck are 14 oil and gas production function modules and living facilities for 150 workers.

Its fully loaded displacement is 195,000 tons.

It's worth mentioning that the platform can berth in a deepwater zone with severe weather conditions in the South China Sea for a long time using a world-leading large-scale submerged turret production (STP) single point mooring (SPM) system. It is one of the first SPM systems China ever developed and has the most complicated and highest degree of integration in the world.

Weighing more than 2,800 tons, the system is fixed undersea by nine 1,740-meter anchor chains. Nineteen underwater oil and gas production and control cables hang from the STP system.

The bottom part of its single point turret is about 1,100 tons and can be hoisted to the 18.5-meter diameter moon-pool on the deck by a large-scale floating crane.

What's more, within the slipping cavity with a diameter of less than 2 meters, 45 joint pipes, 238 cables and thousands of components were installed, making the single point the most complex of its kind with the most slipping rings in China.

During the construction, dozens of key technologies and more than 30 innovations including welding of a 130-millimeter super-thick plate, highly-precision control of the large-scale single point mooring system and integration of super-precise slipping rings were implemented.

The assembly work of the single point mooring system was assembled 40 days ahead of schedule, the quickest result globally for equipment of that kind.

Considering the features of the Liuhua oil field, the FPSO is also equipped with the first China-made liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) recovery system to reclaim and reuse associated gas produced during crude oil development. Thanks to the system, negative gas emissions will be reduced and benefit of nearly 100 million yuan ($14.01 million) can be created.

Counting the newly delivered platform, CNOOC now owns 17 FPSOs with world leading scale and loading capacity.

Completely designed and built by China, HAI YANG SHI YOU 119 can work in water as deep as 420 meters, setting a new record of the operation depth in China and a proof of the country's high-end large-scale FPSO manufacturing capacity and full industrial chain technology.

A complete life cycle integrating design, construction, installation and adjustment as well as operation, management, upgrading and renovation of FPSO has been formed, which improves the country's deepwater oil and gas development project technical abilities with proprietary intellectual property rights.

The FPSO construction also promotes technological development of several industries like shipbuilding and electromechanics as well as metallurgy and information fields.

With the South China Sea a main field for its oil and gas development, CNOOC is now in full swing in strengthening the core technological capacity of deepwater oil and gas resource development. It is promoting advanced ocean engineering construction and improving innovation in FPSO technology and management.

The company intends to contribute to high-quality development of China's offshore oil industry and guarantee the country's energy security.