The largest lifting vessel in China's offshore oil and gas engineering industry, the Blue Whale 7500, has completed its registration transfer and is now officially based in Tianjin. This was announced by the Tianjin-based CNOOC Offshore Oil Engineering Co, Ltd (referred to as CNOOC Engineering).
This move is expected to significantly enhance the city's capabilities in large-scale marine engineering vessel operations, thereby contributing to the high-quality development of the marine equipment industry.
The Blue Whale 7500 is a large self-propelled lifting engineering vessel with a maximum lifting capacity of 7,500 tons.
The vessel has a total length of 239.2 meters, a width of 50 meters, a depth of 20.4 meters, and a draft of 9.6 meters during operations.
It possesses self-propulsion and anchoring capabilities, primarily used for the lifting of marine structures.
Since its deployment, the vessel has been involved in 166 projects, completing a total of 450 major marine engineering structure lifts, with a cumulative lifting weight exceeding two million tons, equivalent to the weight of 50 Beijing "Bird's Nest" stadiums.
Prior to the transfer, the vessel was registered in Hong Kong. To efficiently complete the registration procedures, the Tianjin Maritime Safety Administration assigned dedicated personnel to provide comprehensive policy interpretations and procedural guidance.
Liu Yun, manager of the Vessel Service Center at CNOOC Engineering Installation Branch, stated: "Various relevant departments have actively coordinated and closely cooperated. We completed all registration procedures in just 10 working days, shortening the original plan by 20 days."
As of now, CNOOC Engineering has a total of 13 various types of engineering vessels registered in Tianjin, contributing to the safeguarding of domestic oil and gas reserves and production, as well as the advancement of building China into a marine powerhouse.