THE Enping 20-4 jacket platform, weighing about 12,000 tons and loaded on the tugboat Haiyang Shiyou 228, left the wharf at Chiwan in Shenzhen on Friday and headed for the South China Sea, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

The jacket platform has arrived at Enping oil field as scheduled, about 200 kilometers from Shenzhen. The term “jacket” refers to the steel frame supporting the platform’s deck and top sides.

The Enping 20-4 platform is one of the central platforms of China’s offshore oil production platform Enping 15-1. Its total weight surpassed that of the Eiffel Tower, according to the report.

The Enping 20-4 jacket platform was scheduled to be put into water yesterday. A total of 12 steel piles will be installed to anchor the jacket on the seabed. The whole operation will take about 20 days, according to Li Zhenning, general manager of the Enping 15-1 oil field group development project team of CNOOC Shenzhen branch.

Jacket installation requires extremely high precision. “The installation of Enping 20-4 jacket platform was arranged to be carried out in March, the earliest over the years. Usually, every April and May are the golden periods for the installation of large-scale offshore equipment,” said Liu Huaxiang from CNOOC Shenzhen branch.

In the past 10 years, CNOOC has completed the construction of 24 domestic offshore oil and gas production facilities in Shenzhen, which has promoted the development and upgrading of Shenzhen’s marine engineering technology and marine equipment manufacturing industry, according to the Daily report.

(Wang Jingli)