China Delivers World’s Largest Oil Platform to Saudi Arabia

China’s heaviest offshore oil and gas platform, weighing more than 17,200 tonnes, was completed and delivered to Saudi Arabia at a production facility in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province, China National Offshore Oil Company said early this week.

The platform is one of the world’s largest and it is taller than a 24-story building with a deck area equivalent to 15 basketball courts. It will be installed in Saudi Arabian waters to boost the production capacity of the Marjan oilfield.

The completion of the Marjan oil and gas collection and transportation platform in Saudi Arabia marks a breakthrough in China’s capacity for the construction of large-scale offshore oil and gas equipment. Once fully operational, the Marjan oilfield is expected to produce 24 million tonnes of crude oil annually.

The platform was officially delivered after a construction period lasting 34 months, and it will set sail at the end of August on a large transport ship to its designated installation area some 6,400 nautical miles away.

The Marjan platform is a complex system formed through a network of pipelines as well as chemical treatment and operational control systems designed for collecting and transporting offshore oil and gas to land for processing, serving as a main terminal for offshore oilfields.

The platform can collect and transport 24 million tons of crude oil and 7.4 billion cubic meters of gas annually, making it the leading capacity platform of its kind globally.  The platform’s size, pipeline length and system complexity have all set international records for similar platforms, CNOOC said.

The Marjan platform of Saudi’s state-run oil giant Aramco will be installed in Saudi waters to assist the Marjan oilfield to ramp up annual output to 24 million tons.

Strengthening Energy Cooperation

Experts said that bilateral cooperation such as the Marjan project highlights the high-level complementarity between China and Saudi Arabia amid enhanced and deepened cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

The delivery comes as China and Saudi Arabia strengthen energy cooperation. Aramco CEO Amin Nasser recently said that Aramco was looking to invest in more chemical plants in China over the near term.

Aramco, the world’s largest crude export company, is targeting additional facilities that can transform oil into chemicals to leverage growing demand from China’s emerging green industries, Hong-Kong-based English daily South China Morning Post, quoting Nasser, said.

According to Chinese financial news portal caijing.com, China’s energy cooperation with Saudi Arabia previously focused on traditional energy sources but has evolved to include new-energy sector. In 2023, Saudi Aramco entered into deals worth a total of $8 billion with Chinese partners in the mid-stream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry.