China's first smart factory for offshore oil and gas equipment opens

China's first intelligent manufacturing base for offshore oil and gas equipment was put into full operation on Wednesday in north China's Tianjin Municipality.

Covering an area of about 575,000 square meters, this base built along the coast of the Bohai Sea focuses on producing offshore oil and gas platforms and high-end offshore products, such as liquefied natural gas modules, according to its constructor, China Offshore Oil Engineering Company (COOEC), a subsidiary of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The base consists of four intelligent production workshops, eight production auxiliary centers, 16 final assembly stations and core facilities such as docks facilitating product transportation via large ships. There are also over 600 intelligent production machines at this base.

Compared to the traditional manufacturing process, a series of operations such as material retrieval, pipe coiling, cutting and hydraulic bending can be achieved via a single click through an intelligent manufacturing management platform available at the Tianjin facility.

According to Wang Lei, one of the senior executives at the Tianjin branch of the COOEC, there is a variety of offshore oil and gas equipment, and in the past, producing them featured complicated manufacturing processes and customized and non-standard requirements.

As a result, the COOEC opted to develop an intelligent manufacturing management platform to achieve intelligent production under complex conditions, Wang explained.

"More manufacturing processes are now achieved through the use of equipment, while only a small number of workers are needed to undertake detail adjustment tasks," said Wang.

The base was constructed in two phases. The first phase of the project was put into use in June 2022, and 35 offshore oil and gas platforms were delivered to countries such as China and Canada, with a total weight exceeding 87,000 tonnes.

In the second construction phase of this project, eight final assembly stations and an intelligent pipe production line were added, and the capacity of the docks was increased.

"Production efficiency achieved by the intelligent pipe production line has increased by about 20 percent when compared to what was possible in the first phase, and the overall production capacity of the factory has doubled through digital intelligent manufacturing and precise management," Wang revealed.

In 2023, China's offshore crude oil production had exceeded 62 million tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 3.4 million tonnes – accounting for about 70 percent of China's total crude oil production increase last year.