Pride! A teacher from the Petroleum University has been engaged in entrepreneurship for 25 years; he has broken foreign monopolies and created world-class oil manufacturing technologies

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Are China’s petroleum technology products necessarily inferior to those from abroad? 30 years ago, if you had made such a comment, few people would have objected. But a teacher from Southwest Petroleum University broke this assertion through 25 years of persistent effort. He not only drove foreign competitors out of China but also defeated them in the international market, delivering a demonstration of a \"comeback by Chinese manufacturing.\" A Chinese oil company managed to win orders from international clients by offering a bid that was several million yuan higher than that of European and American companies. This may sound somewhat incredible, as taking advantage of low prices to secure overseas orders is precisely the predicament in which many Chinese oil companies find themselves at present. In the oil sector, however, Chinese companies have recently managed to break free from this predicament, achieving a miracle of turning things around. The creator of this miracle is Chen Lixue, who used to be a computer teacher at Southwest Petroleum University. He is now the Chairman of Chengdu Shengte Petroleum Equipment Simulation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Shengte Petroleum”). Shengte Legend: 25 Years of Creating World-Class Oil Equipment ◆◆◆ The Entrepreneurial Journey of a Professor from an Oil University In the oil industry, safety always comes first. To reduce the occurrence of safety accidents, a milestone product has emerged in the history of the oil drilling industry: the drilling simulator. Training drillers using drilling simulators can **improve their practical skills and ability to respond to crises, thereby enhancing the efficiency and safety of oil drilling. In the past, such equipment was monopolized by a few foreign companies, and its price was extremely high. For example, an American-made DGTRAN drilling simulator cost hundreds of thousands of dollars back in the early 1990s. In addition to being expensive, these high-end devices made in the United States also have a very high failure rate. Generally, an imported simulator starts to malfunction after about a year of use. And once a failure occurs, the cost of repairing them is astonishingly high. “Foreign technicians are charged on a daily basis starting from the moment they board the plane, at 2,000 dollars per day, and the spare parts are also extremely expensive. ”Chen Lixue, chairman of Shengte Petroleum and professor at Southwest Petroleum University, said. To change this difficult situation, in 1992, Chen Lixue, the chairman of Shengte Petroleum and a professor at Southwest Petroleum University, convened teachers from relevant departments at the university to form a development team, which began working on the creation of a domestically produced drilling simulator. Luo Pingya, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and then the president of Southwest Petroleum University, played a key role in this effort. In the early 1990s, developing a drilling simulator seemed like an unattainable goal. At that time, very few people across the country had access to computers, and with immature software and hardware technologies, let alone high-tech products like drilling simulators. Faced with the challenges, the members of the research team did not back down; after a mobilization meeting organized by Academician Luo Pingya, they immediately began the research and development work. ◆◆◆ Ten years to sharpen a sword? But the research team soon discovered that developing a drilling simulator was far more difficult than expected. “At that time, we didn’t even have a case, let alone find suitable chips or monitors; as for 3D animation, no one knew how to do it. ”Chen Lixue recalled. To address the issue with the casing, Chen Lixue and his team reused the casing from a discarded imported simulator and fabricated the circuit boards themselves ； If there is no suitable monitor, use an old one. After 6 years of hard work, this team of teachers finally created a prototype, the DS-1, namely the Drilling Simulator Mark I. But just as Chen Lixue and the team’s teachers were overjoyed, a bucket of cold water was poured on them. 1998 marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of Southwest Petroleum University, and many drilling experts and senior executives from oilfield companies gathered at their alma mater to visit this simulator. But after seeing this DS-1 simulator, they all expressed disappointment, and no one wanted to pay any further attention to it. The R&D team was hit hard, and subsequently many people chose to leave. But Chen Lixue chose to continue, and he became the only person from those who attended the founding meeting of the simulator project back then to still be involved today. After experiencing setbacks, Chen Lixue began to think about how to improve this \"disappointing\" simulator. According to conventional understanding, a simulator should simulate everything of the original device in real time. However, due to the complexity of oil drilling rigs, traditional simulators can only be used for training following a fixed procedure, with a predetermined \"script\". To make drilling operation training more realistic, it is necessary to create a machine that does not operate according to a \"script\"; professionally, this is known as an \"unstructured\" simulator. To achieve this goal, an enormous amount of work is required. “This means we have to start from scratch with all the previous software; not a single line of code from before can be used, and everything needs to be rewritten, which is an unimaginably huge amount of work. ” But Chen Lixue and his team resolutely decided to tear down the software framework that had been built earlier and create a completely new model from scratch. After a decade of rebirth through transformation, the capabilities and visual effects of the current Shengte Oil Simulator far exceed those of its foreign counterparts. Shengte Oil Drilling Simulator ◆◆◆ Striving for Excellence: In addition to reconstructing and optimizing the mathematical models, Chen Lixue places great emphasis on the concept of turning the simulator into a work of art in terms of its manufacturing process. In the past, Chen Lixue promoted an \"engineer’s mindset\" in the company, which meant striving to excel in the work at hand. But later, Chen Lixue realized that when designing simulators, having only an \"engineer’s mindset\" is not enough; a \"designer’s mindset\" is also necessary. “We highly admire Steve Jobs’ design philosophy at Apple, which aims to turn their products into works of art. ”Chen Lixue’s theory. For example, the casing of the simulator was originally assembled by welding steel plates together, but Chen Lixue believed that products manufactured using this method had large gaps and were prone to deformation, which did not meet the requirements for art pieces. To solve this problem, the casings of current simulators are now made from a single piece of aluminum ingot processed using CNC machines. And this is precisely the manufacturing process used for the casings of Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers. At the same time, in order to further improve the visual effects of the simulator, Chen Lixue also introduced MR (Mixed Reality) technology, which is at the forefront of the technology industry today. By using MR technology, the trainees, wearing glasses, feel as if they are in a real working environment, **increasing the realism of the simulator. Chen Lixue also became the first person in the industry to introduce MR technology into drilling simulators. Shengte applies MR (Mixed Reality) technology to simulators ◆◆◆ Breaking monopolies – the products are already mature, and the next step is to expand their market presence. In 2009, Shengte Petroleum was officially established. But the initial market promotion was not successful. Due to a lack of understanding and acceptance of this domestic simulator, most domestic oilfield companies have no desire to purchase it. To this end, Chen Lixue said that the simulator can be borrowed for free, provided that feedback on its use is given. However, many oilfield companies purchased the simulators after using them for a while. Unlike foreign products whose maintenance and system upgrade costs are often extremely high, Chen Lixue adopted a marketing strategy that offers free maintenance and upgrades. Thanks to its superior product quality and a customer-centric marketing strategy, under the leadership of Chen Lixue, Shengte Petroleum’s simulators quickly captured the domestic oilfield market. To this day, the Shengte oil simulator is used in the vast majority of domestic oil fields, including those in Daqing, Shengli, Changqing, Karamay, Liaohe, CNOOC, Jilin, and North China. “Currently, almost all drilling training centers in the country use our products, and we essentially hold over 95% of the domestic market share. ” Chen Lixue said proudly. The Shengte Petroleum Equipment Simulator in oilfield applications ◆◆◆ Going global After driving foreign competitors out of the Chinese market, Shengte Petroleum quickly turned its focus to overseas markets. This time, in the simulator market, Shengte Petroleum has become the disruptive \"wolf\". “None of the simulators we sell are exactly identical to one another, and this is something that cannot be achieved abroad. Products from abroad are all standard products; you just need to select them according to the list. Our products are custom-made; what is presented to the users is the actual drilling rig they are using. ”Chen Lixue explained. Abu Dhabi’s **oil company visited Shengte Petroleum to order a drilling simulator, requesting a 1:1 replica of a certain model of drilling rig. The simulator customized by Shengte Petroleum was subsequently given unanimous approval by the senior management of Abu Dhabi’s oil company. In the international market, what sets Shengte Oil apart is that it competes with its overseas counterparts not by offering lower prices, but by leveraging its genuine technical advantages. This is extremely rare among Chinese oil companies. In Kenya, Shent Petroleum faced strong competition from Drilling Systems, the world’s largest manufacturer of drilling simulators. Although Senter Oil’s simulator was more than $600,000 more expensive than those of its competitors, it managed to outperform them thanks to its unique drilling rig relocation simulation feature, and thus secured the order. Shengte has defeated its overseas competitors and seized the Kenyan market. Currently, Shengte Oil is one of the top three manufacturers of simulators in the world, and it has successfully entered the markets of various major oil-producing countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. In addition to the drilling simulator, Sengte’s range of petroleum simulators also covers various fields such as workover, logging, well logging, fracturing and acidizing, oil and gas production, drill rig installation, downhole tools, assembly, operations under pressure, well control, and coiled tubing. ? Are China’s petroleum technology products necessarily inferior to those from abroad? Through 25 years of relentless effort, Chen Lixue provided the strongest refutation of this assertion. With perseverance, what he discovered was not only the path to the development of a world-class oil company, but possibly also the way to strengthen domestic oil technology in China.