On February 9, 2022, CNOOC's first deepwater plough trencher sea trial operation was successful in the sea area of Yacheng, Hainan, filling the technical gap of deepwater subsea pipeline plough trenching in China.

The plough trencher in this sea trial is currently the only deepwater subsea pipeline plough trencher in China, and it is also one of the most powerful plough trenchers in the world. The projected area of the equipment exceeds 3 standard badminton balls. It has a dead weight of 180 tons, a maximum operating water depth of 500 meters, and a maximum depth of 2.5 meters for trenching.

Subsea pipeline transportation is the most important, fastest, economical and reliable way of offshore oil and gas transportation. In this sea trial, the 3,000-meter-class multi-functional deep-water engineering vessel "Haiyang Shiyou 291" was used as the mother ship to simulate the real subsea pipe trenching scene. , steering trenching and other series of test operations.

Xia Baoying, person in charge of the sea trial project of deepwater plough trencher: This sea trial successfully mastered the complete set of construction technology for deepwater subsea pipeline plough trenching, which not only filled the gap in domestic deepwater subsea pipeline plough trenching technology, but also formed a subsea pipeline. Supporting capacity of plough trenching ships.Editor/Ma Xue