Recently, the "Ocean Oil 122" Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit, Asia's first cylindrical "offshore oil and gas processing plant" designed and built independently by China, entered the final assembly integration sprint stage in Qingdao.
At the production base of Offshore Oil Engineering (Qingdao) Co., Ltd., workers carried out the upper module assembly operations for
"Ocean Oil 122." The main body of "Ocean Oil 122" consists of the hull and the upper functional modules, with a maximum diameter of about 90 meters, a main deck area equivalent to 13 standard basketball courts, a height of nearly 30 floors, a total weight of about 36,000 tons, and composed of nearly 500,000 parts. "Ocean Oil 122" has a designed displacement of 100,000 tons, a maximum oil storage capacity of 60,000 tons, a design life of 30 years, and can operate continuously at sea for 15 years without docking.
"Ocean Oil 122" adopts a new cylindrical structure design, which can effectively reduce the development and operation costs of oil fields compared to traditional ship-type structures. It features an independently developed integrated intelligent central control system for sea and land, which switches to "Intelligent Typhoon Mode" during typhoons, achieving "unmanned" production during the typhoon period and providing a new model for the intelligent and digital construction of offshore oil and gas field facilities. Ma Lin, the construction engineer of China National Offshore Oil Corporation's "Ocean Oil 122," said that the project is the first in China to use a new type of natural gas desulfurization device and dual-fuel generators on an offshore platform. It can fully utilize the associated gas from oil fields, effectively enhancing the project's green energy-saving level. A series of key equipment such as large-capacity hydraulic submersible pumps have been localized.
The upper module undertakes core functions such as oil and gas processing and power output, equivalent to the "heart" of the "offshore oil and gas processing plant." The upper module of "Ocean Oil 122" includes eight individual units such as process, electrical, power, and living quarters, with a total weight of about 8,900 tons, integrating 713 key pieces of equipment. The total length of the cables could wrap around Beijing's Fifth Ring Road nearly four times. The precision of the module's bottom columns docking with the hull reaches the millimeter level, and the minimum distance between two modules is less than the width of an adult's palm, making the construction extremely difficult.
This cylindrical "offshore oil and gas processing plant" is vividly described as a "super energy bowl." Due to the high integration of these modules, composed of hundreds of thousands of parts, the space inside is very narrow. When laying cables, workers often need to squat and move carefully to complete a series of operations. Such high-difficulty construction involves almost all types of work.
Since its construction began in March 2022, the project team has focused on scientific and technological breakthroughs in the face of tight schedules, many technical gaps, and difficult construction management. They have overcome a series of challenges in the design of cylindrical floating production equipment systems and high-precision construction integration, realizing the independent application of 15 key technical equipment. This has enabled China to independently design and manufacture different types of deep-water oil and gas equipment according to different oil fields and sea areas. It is understood that "Ocean Oil 122" is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2024 and will be applied to China's first deep-water oil field-Liuhua 11-1 oil field, standing in the deep waters of the South China Sea at a depth of 324 meters. It will be able to process about 5,600 tons of crude oil per day, becoming another powerful tool for developing China's deep-sea oil and gas resources.
