The world’s first mobile thermal-injection platform, Recai No.1, departed from China Merchants Group’s Jinling Shipyard in Weihai on November 11, heading towards Bohai Bay.
The platform measures 82 meters in length and 42 meters in width, with a two-deck area exceeding 3,000 square meters and a height equivalent to a 20-story building.
It enables operations in waters up to 35 meters deep and can withstand typhoons as powerful as Category 16.
The platform is equipped with thermal-recovery technologies that use high-temperature steam to reduce the viscosity of heavy oil, making extraction easier.
This process is implemented using a mobile thermal-injection system and compensation technology for high-temperature, high-pressure steam pipelines.
Recai No.1 was independently designed and built by Chinese companies, upgraded from the country’s first offshore mobile trial production platform, Offshore Oil 162.
The transformation involved complex processes, including the overhaul of seven major systems such as boiler water treatment, boiler and nitrogen systems.
The upgrade also entailed dismantling and reinstalling more than 150 sets of process equipment, welding more than 500 tons of steel structures, modifying 20,000 meters of pipelines and laying 170,000 meters of cables.
This marks significant progress in China’s ongoing heavy oil extraction efforts.
