What changed
Liuhua, described as China’s first deepwater oilfield, has passed 2 million tonnes of crude production from its secondary-development project. Total field output has now exceeded 40 million tonnes, while daily production reached its highest level in the field’s 22-year operating history.
The project operates in waters averaging 305 metres deep, linking three pieces of infrastructure:
- Haiji-2, handling drilling and oil production
- Haiyang Shiyou Guan-1, handling processing, storage and export
- A subsea production system
Why it matters
The milestone is less about a single production number than about keeping a difficult offshore chain moving. Liuhua’s equipment is monitored from a land-based control centre in Shenzhen, more than 240 kilometres away, through an integrated system covering production and operations.
That remote control matters in the South China Sea, where typhoons and internal waves can disrupt work. A “typhoon-mode” production system has been used 11 times, reportedly avoiding more than 5 million tonnes of lost output and generating over 170 million yuan in economic benefits.
The field’s export system shows the same emphasis on adaptation. China National Offshore Oil Corporation modified the conventional tanker Beihai Kaituo with a bow-loading system in just 12 days, allowing it to work with Haiyang Shiyou Guan-1’s cylindrical design. The tanker can carry up to 450,000 barrels per voyage and has completed 52 lifting voyages, transporting more than 2 million barrels of crude.
A digital platform now matches more than 100 vessels with export needs across 20 terminals. The practical lesson is clear: deepwater production depends not only on extracting oil, but on coordinating platforms, subsea equipment, weather monitoring and tankers as one operating system. The report gives no current daily production figure, so the record high signals momentum without showing its exact scale.
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