Chinese offshore equipment manufacturers see soaring orders

Chinese offshore equipment manufacturers see soaring orders

BEIJING -- Chinese offshore equipment manufacturers are seeing a significant uptick in equipment orders in the recent months. In February, CIMC Raffles, a subsidiary of China International Marine Containers Ltd., signed the general engineering and construction contract for the North Dragon, a deepwater semi-submersible drilling platform to be used on the North Sea. This is another order for a deepwater semisubmersible drilling platform to be used on the North Sea that CIMC Raffles has signed after the general contract for COSLProspector signed last December.

CIMC Raffles will be responsible for designing, purchasing of materials and the whole set of equipment, construction, debugging, drilling package testing, etc for the North Dragon. It’s the first time for a Chinese contractor to undertake the turnkey order for a semisubmersible drilling platform project. North Dragon is the 5th deepwater semisubmersible drilling platform that CIMC Raffles has contracted for the North Sea. Three of the previous four are already under contract to Norsk Statoil.  

On March 8, CNOOC) and CSSC Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding signed a contract in Beijing to join hands to build the Zhong Hai You 16 jackup drilling platform, the first 400-ft jackup drilling platform built in China and also the most advanced involving the largest investment in China’s oil industry so far.  

Additionally, COSCO Shipyard has received offshore engineering orders that worth $ 2.143 billion, accounting for 40% of China’s domestic market. According to Mr. Wang Yuhang, General Manager of COSCO Shipyard, the company’s next step is to enlarge its share in overseas markets and at the same time actively promote sales of its offshore engineering products to the major petroleum producers in China.