The domestic Marine engineering equipment industry climbed from the freezing point

At present, China has entered the second echelon of the global offshore equipment industry, but the offshore equipment industry is still weak in terms of design capacity, supporting capacity and total contracting capacity. Shanghai is the forefront of scientific and technological innovation in the Marine industry, with a complete industrial chain and a strong industrial foundation, forming an advantage in the research and development of Marine engineering equipment. Following specialization and internationalization, adhering to openness and collaboration, a new offshore equipment innovation research and development platform is gathering strength in Shanghai.

"Now the demand for oil and gas is still very strong, but the demand for offshore engineering equipment is not too high. However, there is still a relatively stable demand for offshore production equipment, and we are also cooperating with CNOOC to invest in overseas projects." Marine engineering equipment "veteran" Ni Mingjie picked up the commemorative cup of "Offshore oil 111" trial 20 years ago, drank a sip of water, and continued to analyze the current offshore equipment market. On the drawings taken from the office wall are different kinds of offshore equipment, which Ni Mingjie has dealt with for more than 20 years as the head of the overall design department of China Ocean Engineering Equipment Technology Development Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as "China Sea Engineering").

"Offshore Oil 111" is the first offshore equipment built by Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., LTD. This decorated tanker has taken root in the South China Sea for 20 years, and the "offshore oil city" has exported 50 million tons of crude oil for the country. Looking back to the 1960s and 1970s, when China's offshore equipment development started, Shanghai did a lot of work, the first semi-submersible drilling platform "Exploration No. 3" was designed and built in Shanghai, and the first floating production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) "Bohai Friendship" was also built by Hudong Shipyard. Offshore equipment construction is etched in Shanghai's DNA.

Wu Donglin, director of the Major equipment Industry Department of Shanghai Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission, said that Shanghai is not only the birthplace of China's modern shipbuilding industry, but also the forefront of scientific and technological innovation in the Marine industry, with a complete industrial chain and a strong industrial foundation, forming an advantage in the research and development of Marine engineering equipment.

At present, China has entered the second echelon of the global offshore equipment industry, but the offshore equipment industry is still weak in terms of design capacity, supporting capacity and total contracting capacity. Following specialization and internationalization, adhering to openness and collaboration, a new offshore equipment innovation research and development platform is gathering strength in Shanghai.

Starting, freezing and climbing: Marine equipment is difficult

Marine engineering equipment is the general term of all kinds of equipment used in the development, utilization and protection of the ocean, and is the premise of the development of Marine economy. In front of Ni Mingjie's desk, hanging a classification chart of Marine equipment, there are exploration, drilling, production equipment, only drilling equipment, and drilling ships, jack-up and semi-submersible drilling platforms. These offshore oil and gas resource development equipment is like completing B-ultrasound inspection for the earth, drilling Wells after discovering oil reservoirs, and finally exploiting the underground oil and gas with the help of production equipment.

In the 1960s and 1970s, with the demand for offshore oil and gas exploitation in China, the Marine engineering equipment manufacturing industry gradually started. From the establishment of China's first fixed offshore drilling platform in Bohai Bay in 1966, to the construction of China's first catamaran drilling pontoon "Exploration No. 1" in the 1970s by using two 3,000-ton old cargo ships of Shanghai Shipping Bureau, these offshore engineering platforms have opened the prelude to China's offshore oil development. In 1984, China independently designed and built the first semi-submersible drilling platform "Exploration No. 3" began service, marking that China became a few countries that could independently design and build such platforms at that time.

Semi-submersible drilling platform "Exploration 3".

European and American companies are pioneers in the development of the world's offshore oil and gas resources, as well as leaders in the development of the world's offshore engineering equipment technology. In the late 1980s, a group of large European and American oil companies entered the field of offshore oil development in China. They brought new ideas and advanced offshore equipment. In contrast, there is an obvious gap in the technical performance of the equipment designed and built independently in China. Coupled with the low world energy prices at that time, the domestic and overseas offshore equipment demand is not prosperous, under the double impact, China's offshore equipment field in the 1990s, the development of slow, the overall technical level and foreign gap further widened.

Since the new century, the world economy has grown rapidly, the energy demand has continued to increase, the oil price has risen, and the demand for offshore equipment has increased at home and abroad. The national policy supports the localization of offshore equipment, China's shipbuilding, petrochemical, shipping and other enterprises have increased investment and research and development of offshore equipment, Bohai Rim region, Yangtze River Delta region, Pearl River Delta region gradually formed offshore equipment industry cluster, involved in offshore equipment construction of more than 100 enterprises, China's offshore equipment industry through the trough strides forward

Deep-water geophysical exploration ship "Offshore Oil 720".

In 2010, the "Decision of The State Council on Accelerating the Cultivation and development of strategic emerging Industries" made it clear that the development of Marine resources and Marine engineering equipment should be vigorously developed. In 2011, China also issued the "Marine Engineering Equipment Industry Innovation and Development Strategy (2011-2020)", which proposed that the Marine engineering equipment industry is the material and technical basis for the development and utilization of Marine resources, is a strategic emerging industry that is currently accelerated in China's cultivation and development, and is an important direction for the adjustment and revitalization of the shipbuilding industry.

The reason why there is such a reference, one of the reasons is that before this, China did not take the offshore engineering equipment as an equipment industry to develop, at that time, offshore equipment only followed the footsteps of the shipbuilding industry, oil companies need, shipping enterprises supporting the production of offshore platforms.

"Under the strong support of national policies and the dual pull of strong market demand, a number of offshore equipment, especially jack-up drilling platform construction enterprises, have emerged in China after 2011, and their production capacity has expanded rapidly." However, with the cliff drop in international oil prices, the offshore equipment market fell to the freezing point at the end of 2014 and 2015." Wang Rong, assistant general manager of China Sea Engineering, told Thepaper.cn (www.thepaper.cn) that despite the policy support, the offshore equipment industry has been going hard for more than a decade, and offshore enterprises are struggling.

In recent years, the sea industry equipment construction capacity has experienced a major adjustment, Wang Rong said, the current market has a small number of real Marine construction enterprises, most of the original Marine business enterprises adjusted to ship based. There are less than 10 offshore enterprises that insist on deep cultivation of final assembly and construction, and these enterprises are the backbone of China's offshore equipment construction industry.

Bright spot in the downturn: Offshore Oil and Gas Processing Plants

The development of offshore equipment is closely related to oil and gas demand and international oil prices. International oil prices have fluctuated, and the offshore equipment industry has also experienced a roller coaster market.

Around 2010, the international oil price once soared to $120 / barrel, the demand for offshore drilling equipment was strong, and many companies flocked to the market. In 2014, the international oil prices plummeted, the oil and gas companies had to bite the bite to control operating costs, the cost of offshore barrel oil extraction fell to the balance point of about 40 US dollars, the oil field exploration and development business shrank sharply, the demand for offshore drilling equipment fell into a long-term downturn, forcing the offshore equipment industry to reshuffle. In 2022, the impact of the epidemic has weakened, the tension between Russia and Ukraine, and the demand for oil and gas is strong, which has stimulated international oil prices to climb all the way back to a medium high, driving the global offshore oil and gas resource development activities to continue to pick up, and the offshore equipment industry has ushered in the dawn.

Although the current international oil prices are still unstable, the offshore equipment industry is still in a downturn, but that year's offshore drilling equipment inventory is gradually being digested by the market, floating production storage and offloading equipment (FPSO) demand is stable, is the downturn in the market bright spot. In particular, the FPSO market will grow rapidly in 2022, with nearly 10 FPSO orders placed around the world, and the main construction and refitting will be concentrated in China.

Floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO) "Offshore Oil 111".

FPSO is vividly known as "offshore oil and gas processing plant", it is the core facility of offshore oil and gas resources development, mainly used for offshore oil and gas and other energy exploitation, processing, storage, shipping, can be from the underground oil and gas resources rough processing into qualified crude oil storage in the cargo tank, reached a certain amount of reserves through the export system to shuttle tankers.

Known as one of the top ten ships in China, "Bohai Friendship" is the first FPSO independently developed by China. It was officially put into production in July 1989. It is a major offshore oil development facility integrating functions such as crude oil processing, offshore oil depot and oil unloading terminal. Its completion has achieved a breakthrough in the design and construction of China's floating production and storage vessel, and the world's first floating production and storage vessel has been used in the sea area with ice.

"We have a certain technical reserve, FPSO at that time in the country or have the possibility of breakthrough." In the 1980s and 1990s, we developed a number of FPsos, trained and retained a professional team of FPsos." Ni Mingjie said that since then, CNOOC's new FPSO all adopted domestic design and construction, after more than 10 consecutive projects of engineering practice, continuous iteration and maturity of technology, the dozen FPSO has made important contributions to China's energy security.

Ni Mingjie has more than 20 years of experience in the development and design of offshore equipment. After graduating from university in 1996, he entered the 708th Research Institute of China State Shipbuilding Group, where he stayed for 26 years. In 2001, he participated in the construction of the "Offshore Oil 111" FPSO, the first offshore equipment built by Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co., LTD., and he still keeps the commemorative water cup of the "Offshore Oil 111" trial voyage in 2003. "Domestic offshore equipment is considered to be 'two male', one is the Bohai Sea rim area, that is, Dalian, Yantai, Qingdao and other places, to jack-up drilling platforms and semi-submersible drilling platforms, but also to build FPSO." The other is Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta, where a lot of RIGS and FPsos have been built."

FPSO cost is high, the production process is complex, the equipment and facilities are highly integrated, and the construction is difficult. However, Wang Rong said, "In the past two years, the market for offshore production equipment is good, the FPSO market needs to be deeply mined, its supporting equipment chain is long, and the construction capacity of domestic FPSO is also very strong, so it has a good development basis."

Ranked in the second echelon of the world, there is a long way to go to make up for the shortcomings

The development of the global Marine engineering equipment industry has basically formed a competitive pattern of three echelons. The first echelon is dominated by European and American countries, which basically monopolizes research and development, preliminary design, offshore construction, engineering project contracting and the supply of core key equipment. The second tier consists of South Korean and Singaporean companies, mainly responsible for final assembly construction, large module construction and installation of core key equipment.

From the point of view of the Marine industry chain, Wang Rong said, "We are now relatively strong is the final assembly and construction. At present, there are three countries with relatively large final assembly and construction volume: China, South Korea and Singapore. Our final assembly and construction capacity is comparable to that of Singapore. We can say that after more than 50 years of development, our country has now joined the second echelon."

Shipyard offshore construction orders in 2022.

Although it ranks in the second echelon, there are still shortcomings and weaknesses in China's offshore equipment industry in terms of design capability, supporting capability and total contracting capability. Before 2010, China's offshore equipment and ships were not "separated", and the product-oriented point-like promotion of offshore equipment led to the absence of an important link in this industrial chain.

"Compared with the shipbuilding industry, the offshore equipment industry has a different industrial chain and supply chain. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's shipbuilding industry has established a relatively complete industrial system including research institutes, manufacturing enterprises, supporting equipment and maintenance services. The offshore equipment manufacturing industry involves many fields, and the distribution is relatively dispersed. Like ship and related equipment manufacturing, mining, metallurgy, construction special equipment manufacturing, all include Marine engineering equipment manufacturing, all kinds of equipment supporting enterprises for Marine platforms are scattered in petroleum and petrochemical, ships, machinery and other fields, quite a lot of equipment is dedicated to Marine platforms, but also not on the ship." Wang Rong suggested that at present, the offshore equipment industrial system urgently needs to be established and improved, and it is necessary to open up the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and the supply side as soon as possible.

In terms of design, China's independent design capacity of offshore equipment needs to be improved, especially the design capacity of floating production equipment such as semi-submersible platforms and FLNG (floating liquefied natural gas production storage and unloading device) has not really been recognized by the international market, and there are not many system equipment that can be shipped. Although China has developed a number of domestic systems such as drilling systems, but because of the long test cycle, the real application is still less, and the application and promotion of domestic system equipment has a long way to go.

At the same time, Wang Rong said that China has undertaken fewer total projects, "most of the time to earn hard money, did not grasp the high-end value chain." At present, the major offshore equipment construction enterprises in South Korea, Singapore and other countries have gradually entered the field of engineering project contracting. "The total contract project is big and risky, and if one link fails, the whole project will basically be lost." Total contract capacity includes the ability to control key technologies and industrial chains, a deep understanding of front-end oilfield development, a clear oilfield development program and equipment selection, which is the embodiment of comprehensive capabilities, China still needs to learn from the head enterprises.

At present, in order to comply with the trend of digital development, the global offshore industry continues to increase the research and development and application of digital technologies such as blockchain, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. "International advanced enterprises have long been released in digitization and intelligence, and in the domestic Marine engineering field, offshore digital oil fields, intelligent manufacturing, and Marine equipment intelligence have become hot spots in the industry." This makes Wang Rong realize that intelligence is an important focus for the development of the industry, to build a digital R & D service platform for the whole life cycle of Marine equipment, "In the industrial chain to make up for the link, we can not follow the traditional model to supplement the lack of the industrial chain, but to integrate with the current development trend of information technology." Including design tools, product research and development should be digital and intelligent."

Wu Donglin also said that in the future, the high-quality development of Shanghai's Marine industry should promote intelligent construction and intelligent equipment, promote the application of new technologies such as 5G, big data, and the Internet of Things, promote visual online detection, digital twin verification, and remote equipment operation and maintenance, and form industry-specific digital solutions.

Through international cooperation, the whole industrial chain will be opened up

Marine engineering equipment is the "bull nose" of Marine economy. If you do not have your own offshore equipment, developing the Marine economy and building a maritime power is just a fantasy. However, Marine engineering equipment is a large and complex integrated system, which requires the aggregation of various resources, "closed can not make a good product", Wang Rong said that the development of Marine equipment industry must follow specialization and internationalization, adhere to openness and collaboration.

Global offshore equipment turnover in 2022.

In December 2021, China State Shipbuilding relocated its headquarters to Shanghai. China Ocean Engineering Equipment Technology Development Co., Ltd. was established in Shanghai at the same time, and a new innovative research and development platform for offshore equipment is accumulating strength in Shanghai.

Wang Rong said that there is no contradiction between opening up and cooperation and solving the problem of weak links in the industrial chain. China Sea Industry expects to build the Marine industrial ecological chain in a collaborative way, foreign countries have excellent innovation capabilities, the international market is a big market, and domestic and foreign partners to join hands, combine the best resources, rapidly improve the level of innovation, to build a complete industrial innovation system. China Sea Industry has four business divisions covering overall design, engineering management, system equipment, testing and certification, the whole industrial chain connects both sides of supply and demand, promotes industrial cooperation, and undertakes the mission of promoting technological innovation in the industry. "The demand side can fully support the industry, and the supply side can clearly know the real demand on the demand side." China Sea industry to accurately feel the needs of the demand side, pass to the equipment manufacturers, and constantly improve the design and manufacturing capacity."

In addition to promoting common technology research and development and improving the level of equipment intelligence, China offshore engineering plan relies on domestic testing capabilities to promote the formation of China's independent offshore equipment key equipment testing and certification capabilities, so that China's development equipment can be applied in the actual engineering of offshore oil fields. "Although the equipment has been developed, but without a lot of engineering practice, its maturity and reliability can not be improved, and users often dare not use it, because the risk of being the first to eat crabs is large." We hope to cultivate domestic R & D testing capabilities, put the equipment at sea to do simulation experiments, and use two or three years to quickly find problems to upgrade and iteration, and then enter the engineering application." Ni Mingjie said that for users, it is also conducive to reducing risks and reducing potential losses, "as long as the equipment is used, you can better explore the market."

Today, in the surrounding area of China Sea engineering, are located offshore equipment enterprises CIMC Raffles, 708 Institute, China Classification Society, Norsk Veritas, American Classification Society, etc., downstairs is China Sea Boat, which is responsible for software development under China State Shipbuilding Group. With the landing of CSSC and various scientific research institutes, the business that used to be on business trips will soon be able to reach upstream and downstream enterprises to talk directly.

Ni Mingjie said that Shanghai's offshore equipment industry level is first-class in the country, "Shanghai's shipbuilding strength of enterprises, the ability to make offshore industry is also very strong." Shanghai has a total R & D and design units such as 708 CSSC, 704, 711 and other offshore equipment and mechanical and electrical equipment development units, and also has Waigaoqiao, Jiangnan and Hudongzhonghua and other final assembly manufacturers, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tongji University, Shanghai Ocean University and other universities to cultivate professional talents for the industry. Shanghai ship power supporting enterprise ship power development of medium and high-speed Marine engines, to solve the problem of ship "heart disease". Shanghai Electric heavy machinery processing capacity for forging major equipment parts. From Shanghai radiation Yangtze River Delta area, Marine equipment localization supporting equipment can be found here. Educational resources, manufacturing resources, R & D and design resources and financial services support the development of offshore equipment, and superimpose the electronic information industry to promote the development of intelligent offshore equipment.

"We need to give ourselves time and space to enhance the capacity and level of key links in the offshore equipment industry." "Wang Rong said.