BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- An unmanned offshore oil and gas platform has completed installation on the Enping oilfield in the eastern South China Sea, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has said.
The platform was made by the CNOOC with standardized design and construction, the company said on Wednesday. It is the first of its kind by the company, and can save remarkable construction and maintenance costs by removing facilities such as offices and living buildings.
The platform is more intelligent, capable of remote monitoring and logging and conducting a safe shutdown of facilities on the sea.
Meanwhile, its oil and gas processing capacity has significantly improved, and it can operate during typhoons without suspension.
The weight of the platform is only one-third of that of a traditional one, and the deck area is half. Thus the maintenance workload can be reduced by 30 percent, saving annual operation and maintenance costs of more than 10 million yuan (about 1.5 million U.S. dollars), according to the company. ■
