On August 12, the Marjan oil and gas gathering and transportation platform, the heaviest international offshore oil and gas platform ever built by China, was completed and delivered in Qingdao, Shandong Province. Its completion marks a breakthrough in China's construction technology for large offshore oil and gas equipment.

At the international high-end equipment manufacturing base in Qingdao, Shandong, a "giant" weighing more than 17,000 tonnes is currently the largest oil and gas gathering and transportation platform under construction in the world. After 34 months of construction, it was officially delivered today and will set off at the end of the month aboard a large transport vessel for installation in sea areas 6,400 nautical miles away.

The Marjan oil and gas gathering and transportation platform is mainly responsible for gathering offshore oil and gas extracted and transporting it to land for processing. It consists of complex systems such as large manifolds, pipeline cleaning, chemical treatment, and operation control. The platform's deck area is equivalent to 15 basketball courts, and its height exceeds that of a 24-story building. It is the central hub for oil and gas gathering for the entire oilfield cluster and a "throat" corridor for external transportation. Each year it can gather and transport 24 million tonnes of crude oil and 7.4 billion cubic meters of associated gas, ranking among the world's top in oil and gas transportation capacity. The platform's scale and volume, pipeline types and sizes, and system complexity all set records among comparable international platforms. The prefabrication and overall installation of pipelines with ultra-large dimensions and ultra-high wall thickness posed enormous challenges to the project.

The Marjan platform will be installed in Saudi Arabian waters for the capacity expansion and development of the Marjan oilfield. By connecting important production and transportation facilities of the oilfield, the platform will further help the oilfield unleash its production capacity. After the Marjan oilfield is fully put into production, its annual crude oil output will reach 24 million tonnes; the output of this single offshore oilfield is equivalent to the annual crude oil output of China's Shengli oilfield.