Photo: courtesy of CNOOC

China's largest offshore oil producer China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) on Friday announced that it will onstream China's first offshore oil platform equipped with smart technology, potentially boosting operation efficiency by 30 percent.

The Qinhuangdao 32-6 oilfield is located at the central north of Bohai Bay with an average water depth of approximately 20 meters.

With an operation history of two decades, the oilfield recently underwent a smart transformation, facilitated by applying cutting-edge technologies inducing cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, 5G wireless connection and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.

Aside from a 30-percent-lift in efficiency, maintenance cost is slashed by five to 10 percent and required labor reduced by 20 percent, CNOOC said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Friday, noting the advantages of the newly equipped smart technologies.

Over 400 smart cameras, 26,000 automatic data collectors are installed on one offshore platform whose area equals two soccer fields. These sensors are capable of collecting up to 100,000 messages per second, and data collectedly annually could amount to 6 terabytes.

The application of smart technologies offered better earlier warning capacity and enhanced safety for the platform so that operations are further optimized, the company said.

A first in China, the smart transformation project has full proprietary rights, with over 1.3 million lines of codes, over 100 algorithm modules and 29 intellectual property patents.

A total of 2.4 billion yuan ($373 million) will be spent on smart technologies to convert all CNOOC oilfields by 2025, the statement said.

The Qinhuangdao 32-6 oilfield accumulatively produced 40 million cubic meters of crude since entering operation in 2001. 

Global Times