CNOOC completes process modules project

China National Offshore Oil Corp, the nation's top offshore oil and gas driller, has delivered its last two modules constructed in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, and built for Shell-led LNG Canada, which marks the completion of the project of 35 process modules, the company said.

CNOOC attributed the completion of the process modules to the use of integrated construction solutions, which is a rare case globally. The modules will be shipped to the project site in British Columbia, Canada, for on-site installation, it said.

The success of the construction illustrates that the country's technical capability in integrated joint construction of a supersized liquified natural gas modular plant ranks tops in the world, it said.

Each module is 37 meters tall and weighs 5,465 metric tons. It is mainly responsible for the pretreatment of raw material gas, said the company.

According to CNOOC, the first phase of the project includes building two liquefaction trains with a capacity of 14 million tons per year. When completed and put into operation, it will supply high-quality clean energy to Asia.

Zhuang Hongchang, the project manager with CNOOC, said the company is responsible for building 35 process modules for the project, including 19 core modules. The project is composed of more than 770,000 structural components and weighs nearly 179,000 tons.

One of the largest energy investment projects in Canada, LNG Canada is the world's first integrated constructed LNG plant constructed by China. It is designed with four production lines. The first phase of the project includes two production lines, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council said.

An analyst said when put into operation, the project will supply high-quality LNG to Asia and help diversify China's natural gas import channels.

China has seen continuous upstream investment and production commitment in recent years and the Qingdao facility is proof that China has the capacity to build and assemble a world-class advanced LNG modular plant, said Li Ziyue, an analyst with BloombergNEF.

The company delivered the 118-meter tall floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility called the Penguin, an offshore oil and gas processing plant, in December, which is the heaviest cylinder-shaped FPSO unit built in China to date, with a storage capacity of 400,000 barrels.

Since 2010, the company has completed several international large-scale LNG modular construction projects such as Gorgon and Ichthys LNG projects in Australia and delivered core modules for the Yamal LNG project, the world's first polar LNG plant, in August 2017, it said.