China Offshore Oil Engineering eyes more revenue from abroad

An offshore engineering site of COOEC in Qingdao, Shandong province. Headquartered in Tianjin, COOEC owns another two offshore engineering sites in Tanggu, Tianjin and Zhuhai in Guangdong province. The company's current operational area is around 1.42 million square meters and it plans to expand it to 2.07 million sq m by 2018. CHINA DAILY

China Offshore Oil Engineering (Qingdao) Co Ltd, a unit of crude and gas producer CNOOC Ltd, is looking to increase its revenue from overseas markets to around 70 percent by 2015 from the present 27 percent, a top company official said on Tuesday.

Chen Baojie, general manager of COOEC Qingdao, said the company has a steady pipeline of orders from several international oil and gas companies like Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp.

"We used to focus on equipment supplies for the domestic offshore oil exploration market. We are now looking to make a mark in the overseas markets," said Chen.

The company established a 10-year strategic cooperation agreement with Shell in 2011, and most of the oil projects the Anglo Dutch firm owns in China use COOEC Qingdao's engineering equipment, said Chen.

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China Offshore Oil Engineering Co Ltd, subsidiary of CNOOC and parent company of COOEC Qingdao, is one of the largest general contractors of offshore oil projects in Asia.

Zhou Xuezhong, president of COOEC, said that during the first six months of the year, the company signed six overseas deals for a total contract value of $2 billion. The company has also participated in offshore engineering markets in Australia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and western and southern Africa.

The company saw its profit soar to 2.75 billion yuan ($400 million) in 2013 from 850 million yuan in 2012. During the first six months of this year, the company reported a record high profit of 1.6 billion yuan.

Zhou said with more orders coming in, the company plans to invest more on business expansion, innovation and on boosting the capacity of its deep-water business.

Headquartered in Tianjin, COOEC owns three offshore engineering sites in Tanggu, Tianjin, Qingdao in Shandong province and Zhuhai in Guangdong province. The current operational area of COOEC is around 1.42 million square meters, and the company plans to expand it to 2.07 million sq m by 2018.

On Tuesday, COOEC Qingdao finished construction of three ice-resistant jackets and delivered them to the Bohai sea for installation.

According to the company, the new jackets can effectively resist ice-induced vibration, earthquakes, sea ice, typhoons and other adverse sea conditions.

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research with Xiamen University, said the technology advances made by China's offshore oil engineering sector will come in handy for the country's deep-water oil exploration efforts.

Chinese companies are closing the gap with global oil giants in the area of deepwater drilling. However, they need to keep making efforts on research and technological innovation because the core value-added part-design still depends on foreign companies in many cases, Lin said.