A tanker carrying LNG from Australia seen at Jiangsu LNG terminal in January, 2018 Photo: VCG

 

China's largest offshore oil producer China National Offshore Oil Corp successfully raised roofs of four 220,000 cubic meters of LNG (liquefied natural gas) storage tanks for its Rudong project, marking the maturity of China's core LNG storage technologies for expanding the use of natural gas.

Located in Yancheng, East China's Jiangsu Province, the project is independently designed and built by CNOOC, having the largest single LNG tank in China so far, which is also the largest LNG national reserve base built at one time in the country.

According to Li Feng, the person in charge of the project, raising roof is the most technically difficult process with the highest safety requirement in the construction of a tank.

The project was kicked off in 2019 and is expected to be put into operation by 2022. After completion, the Jiangsu LNG project will become China's largest LNG storage base, greatly improving the country's natural gas emergency peak shaving capabilities. 

Once completed, the Rudong project will supply stable LNG through pipelines, containers, trucks, ships and other means to East Central China, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 75 million tons per year, equivalent to planting 20 million trees per year. 

The successful roofing of the LNG storage tanks is a prelude to the construction of China's super-large LNG storage tanks, meaning that super-large storage tanks will become the main force in China's LNG storage base, analysts said.

Zhang Chao, head of the CNOOC LNG storage tank design team, said that CNOOC successfully solved the problems such as large-span structural stability and seismic design in the process of design and construction, becoming one of the few design and construction parties that master the core technology of LNG storage tanks in the world.

CNOOC deployed the 10-million-ton-level LNG storage base, aiming to promote China's natural gas production, supply, storage and marketing systems, and follow the central government's target to expand the use of natural gas in the energy mix.

In order to build domestically developed LNG storage technology, CNOOC established a technical team in 2009 to start research on LNG storage tank technology. So far, CNOOC has successively completed the design and construction of 30,000 CBM LNG storage tanks in Tianjin, and 160,000 CBM tanks in Fujian and Zhejiang.

Global Times