On May 10, China’s first deepwater oil and gas equipment process pipeline intelligent production line was completed at CNOOC Engineering’s Zhuhai Deepwater Equipment Manufacturing Base and entered the commissioning stage. The production line innovatively applies the domestically pioneered integrated technology of “production management and control system + intelligent transportation system + AI visual boundary determination,” which is of great significance for promoting the intelligent development of China’s deepwater offshore oil and gas equipment manufacturing.
Process pipelines, known as the “main arteries” of offshore oil and gas resource development facilities, are the core infrastructure for offshore oil and gas development. They undertake the transportation functions of oil, water, medium fluids, etc., during facility production, and their construction quality directly affects the production safety of the facility’s service cycle. Particularly, oil and gas facilities in deepwater areas need to operate stably for long periods under extreme conditions such as high pressure, high temperature, and strong corrosion, imposing more stringent requirements on the reliability of process pipelines, the professional quality of operators, and the thoroughness of process plans.
This production line consists of modules including the MES production management and control system, an integrated assembly and welding intelligent system, an AI intelligent visual recognition system, and an AGV intelligent transportation system. It connects operational links such as rust removal and marking, logistics transportation, intelligent assembly, and adaptive welding, covering the entire intelligent production process of “cutting-assembly-welding” for 3 material types, 8 pipe diameters, and multiple types of pipe fittings.
Facing industry challenges such as large specification differences, material diversity, and complex process types of deepwater oil and gas equipment process pipelines, the project team, in collaboration with advanced domestic intelligent equipment manufacturing enterprises, spent two years overcoming the difficulties of integrating and interconnecting intelligent production equipment and software support systems. This achieved intelligent full-process production including flexible work order scheduling, one-click execution of the production line, and remote barrier-free centralized control, significantly improving production efficiency and product quality.
In recent years, CNOOC Engineering has adhered to the dual-wheel drive of independent innovation and intelligent upgrading, continuously strengthened industrial chain leadership and collaborative research, built China’s first “smart factory” for offshore oil and gas equipment, successively put into operation China’s first batch of independently developed offshore engineering flexible manufacturing intelligent welding robot equipment systems and the first intelligent coating production line for offshore oil and gas equipment. It has fully opened up the entire intelligent construction process for deepwater oil and gas equipment process pipelines, systematically forming an integrated, independently controllable capability from intelligent design, flexible manufacturing to precision coating. This has achieved a leapfrog upgrade of key nodes in offshore oil and gas equipment manufacturing from traditional models to digital empowerment, from decentralized operations to intelligent collaboration, and from experience-driven to standard-led, providing solid support for the high-level intelligentization and localization of China’s deepwater oil and gas equipment manufacturing.
In the next step, with technology incubation and industrial application as core objectives, the project team will orderly advance the commissioning and acceptance work of the deepwater oil and gas equipment process pipeline production line, continuously optimize system performance, and strengthen process adaptation, laying a solid foundation for subsequent engineering demonstration applications of the production line. This will help China’s deepwater oil and gas equipment manufacturing comprehensively upgrade from traditional models to intelligent ones, injecting strong momentum into the high-quality development of offshore oil and gas equipment manufacturing.
