Baosteel Heavy Plates Will Prop up the "Artificial Island"

Recently, the steel for 2500 T offshore unit, developed and produced by Baosteel Ltd., passed the quality inspection: it satisfied all performance indexes and fully met the requirements of the offshore unit construction project of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Baosteel Ltd. now is capable of producing steel for offshore unit in batches.

Offshore units are described as "artificial island". They undertake the important task of offshore oil & gas field exploitation. Being different from continental use, they have to withstand seawater corrosion and attacks from great storms and other environmental extremes. Heavy plate product for offshore unit construction must have super shock-resistant and tearing-off-resistant performances so as to ensure stable and safe long-term exploitation.

Therefore, steel for offshore unit is known in the industry as the "pearl" of heavy plate products, extremely difficult to produce. Due to the supply shortage of energies such as the petroleum, China is pressing forward offshore unit construction. Last year, CNOOC started Wenchang Offshore Unit and Xijiang Offshore Unit construction projects in South China Sea area.

Both of them are state major projects. Before, core supporting parts of the unit, such as form work and jacket, were constructed mostly of imported large-thickness heavy plate products. Taking the advantage of experiences in producing high-strength large-thickness steel for shipbuilding, Baosteel Branch tried boldly and gained good effect in only over a month through strict control in rolling accuracy.

CCS tracked the production and inspection processes of the first batch of 100T trial products, and found: the steel for offshore unit produced by Baosteel Ltd. has reached domestic best level in dimension accuracy, appearance and internal quality, and has stable performances. After that, Baosteel Ltd.

further optimized the production process and established stable production technologies for various thicknesses, thus consolidated the technical advantage. In last January and February, Baosteel Ltd. adopted the mature technology and produced 2 batches of steel for offshore unit, 16 mm ~ 80 mm thick, according to the contract.

The products were sent to the customer smoothly. These experiences have laid a foundation for industrialized large-scale production. It was known that in Wenchang and Xijiang Projects, CNOOC would use the steel by Baosteel Ltd. for all core components of the unit, such as jackets and platform formworks, instead of relying on import for such products.