【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Drilling Begins on China’s First Offshore CCUS Project 2025-2070

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Let’s give praise and support to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment; your participation in discussions is the greatest encouragement. **********************【Ten Years of Great Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Continuous updates and summaries available – feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** On March 24th, China’s first offshore CCUS well (for carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage) was drilled at the Enping 15-1 platform, located in the Pearl River Delta basin. The project is expected to inject over 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into seabed formations on a large scale over 10 years, while also improving oil reservoir recovery rates and boosting crude oil production. The Enping 15-1 platform is currently the largest offshore crude oil production platform in Asia, located in waters with a depth of about 90 meters. The Enping 15-1 oil field developed by this platform is a high-carbon-dioxide content oil field; if developed using conventional methods, carbon dioxide will be brought to the surface along with the crude oil. This not only causes corrosion to offshore platform facilities and subsea pipelines but also increases carbon dioxide emissions. The million-ton-class CCUS project at the Enping 15-1 oil field enables the capture, purification, and compression of carbon dioxide generated during oil extraction. This gas is then injected precisely into underground reservoirs through a CCUS well, thereby enhancing the energy levels in the reservoirs and the fluidity of the crude oil, which helps to push the oil toward the production wells. This approach significantly improves oil recovery rates, achieving a win-win situation with both increased oil production and reduced carbon emissions. In June 2023, CNOOC put into operation China’s first offshore CCS (Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage) demonstration project at the Enping 15-1 oil field. To date, it has operated safely for nearly 13,000 hours, with over 180,000 tons of carbon dioxide having been injected back into the ground. Since the research work on the CCUS project for the Enping 15-1 oil field was launched at the end of 2023, CNOOC has drawn on its extensive experience with onshore oil fields as well as the actual conditions on site, and has conducted in-depth studies focusing on layer and well selection, equipment development, drilling operations, and risk monitoring. As a result, four \"optimal layers\" were identified, located 2.4 kilometers away from the Enping 15-1 platform at depths of 1,200 to 1,600 meters, for carbon dioxide injection. Each well covers oil reserves of over 7.5 million tons, which enables a significant improvement in the utilization rate of low-grade resources. The CCUS well drilled this time is designed to have a depth of 3,243 meters. It adopts an innovative approach of repurposing existing wells combined with staged gas injection, and it faces various engineering challenges such as high requirements for wellbore integrity, complex gas injection strings, and difficulties in achieving precise injection.