Go to Deep and High Seas, Actively Embrace Mega Ocean Engineering Industry

By Wu Xiuxia

Ocean Engineering Equipment Family Continues to Grow

With gradual progress of human beings to deep and high seas and continuous development of new marine resources, ocean engineering equipment needs constant update and upgrade, the ocean engineering equipment family continues to grow, and the scope of equipment is also gradually expanded.

“At present, when it comes to ocean engineering equipment, many people still stay on the understanding of traditional offshore oil and gas production equipment (offshore oil and gas production platform, offshore oil and gas processing equipment and all kinds of offshore engineering vessels).Therefore, in order to grasp the whole picture of ocean engineering equipment and its industry more intuitively, we have put forward mega ocean engineering equipment and its industry.” Tao Yonghong, executive vice president and professor of the Deep Blue Research Institute of Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, said that in recent years, the emergence of new types of ocean engineering equipment, such as offshore wind power equipment, marine ranching platform equipment, deep and high sea farming equipment, ocean energy (tidal energy, wave energy, etc.)power generation equipment, seawater desalination equipment, offshore nuclear power equipment, offshore large floating structural devices, island reef construction and inshore engineering equipment, is the best example.

However, Tao Yonghong also pointed out that from the point of view of development, the the mega ocean engineering equipment family is far more than the existing categories of ocean engineering equipment. In the future,with the improvement of technical level, more types of ocean engineering equipment will be produced and applied.Therefore, the mega ocean engineering equipment industry still has a growing process, we should use the dynamic and development perspective to understand the mega ocean engineering equipment and its industry. At the same time, the government and industry insiders and related enterprises should attach great importance to and pay attention to the development of mega ocean engineering equipment and its industry, and continue to move towards deep and high seas.

Promising Prospect of Emerging Ocean Engineering Industry Market

The development of marine economy needs the support of mega ocean engineering equipment industry.The mega ocean engineering equipment industry includes traditional ocean engineering equipment industry and emerging ocean engineering equipment industry, including all kinds of ocean engineering equipment manufacturing industry, ocean engineering equipment supporting industry and ocean engineering equipment producer service industry.

The mega ocean engineering equipment industry has the characteristics of intensive knowledge,intensive technology, intensive capital,fewer material resource consumption,great growth potential and good comprehensive benefit, but also has the features of high investment, high yield,high technology, high risk and so on. “The mega ocean engineering equipment is a typical high-tech and high-value-added product, and is in the high-end of the marine industry chain,” Tao Yonghong said. In the case of high technology, the technical requirements of mega ocean engineering equipment are very high,marked by high system integration level,complicated process, and hard-to-control construction progress, which requires very high technical level of enterprises.

“Although the demand of the traditional ocean engineering equipment industry has been in a downturn recently,the ocean oil and gas equipment market has a great development potential in the long run, especially in the deep- and high-sea oil and gas resource exploitation aspect, which has a good market prospect.Increasing orders and stable growth of non-hydrocarbon function ocean engineering equipment play an important role in stabilizing the ocean engineering equipment industry," said Tao Yonghong.As humanity goes to deep and high seas,emerging ocean engineering equipment is required to serve as support if new marine resources are to be developed and utilized.And this facilitates constant expansion of emerging ocean engineering equipment market. Over recent years, ocean wind power equipment and its supporting equipment, offshore nuclear power equipment and its supporting equipment,large deep and high sea farming equipment and supporting equipment have all maintained a high speed development.Therefore, the emerging ocean engineering equipment industry providing equipment support for the development of marine resources enjoys a broad prospect and huge potential.

Improve the Mega Ocean Engineering Equipment Supporting Capacity

From the point of view of industrial chain, mega ocean engineering equipment can be divided into four main business areas: design, manufacture, installation and maintenance. Among them, the design field includes engineering design,ocean engineering equipment design and other offshore facilities design; the manufacturing field includes ocean engineering equipment manufacturing,ocean engineering supporting manufacturing and other offshore facilities manufacturing; the installation field refers to the use of ocean engineering vessels and other tools in ocean engineering equipment or other offshore facilities for offshore fixation and assembly process; the maintenance field refers to inspection, maintenance, repair, demolition and reconstruction of ocean engineering products, including wharf maintenance and ocean engineering equipment maintenance.Generally speaking, wharf maintenance is used for exploration and development equipment and engineering construction equipment, and offshore maintenance for production equipment and other offshore facilities.

Tao Yonghong believes the traditional ocean engineering equipment industry chain is a relatively complete and wellstructured industry chain with the core of the traditional ocean engineering equipment manufacturing industry, the supporting industry and the related service industry. Due to the different core functions of each type of ocean engineering equipment, in particular,different specific applications of emerging ocean engineering equipment and huge differences of core functions, and the mega ocean engineering equipment industry chain is difficult to explain uniformly. However,he also points out that in any kind of ocean engineering equipment, its core function is realized through the core supporting equipment. Therefore, the development of mega ocean engineering equipment can not be separated from the development of the core supporting equipment, furthermore,the technical content and the manufacturing process of the core supporting equipment are often higher than those of ocean engineering equipment structure itself.

“At present, the common problem of ocean engineering industry is that ocean engineering equipment manufacturing is

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-73-stronger than equipment matching, but also stronger than basic research. The lack of supporting capacity is not only reflected in the traditional oil and gas production platform equipment, the matching capacity of deep and high sea equipment is even weaker,and the matching ability of emerging ocean engineering equipment is also very weak.”Tao Yonghong said that the industrial chain of mega ocean engineering equipment should not only be well equipped, but also matched strongly. At present, China has made some achievements in the field of supporting equipment for ocean engineering equipment, but the supporting capacity of key equipment involving deep and high sea equipment and emerging ocean engineering equipment is seriously insufficient, leaving a big gap with the current advanced countries.

Five Countermeasures Brace up Jiangsu to Walk towards Deep Blue

“As far as the whole country is concerned, Jiangsu can take the lead in moving to the deep and high sea, and it can obtain the priority of developing the resource repository of the deep and high sea resources.As far as the modern marine economy itself is concerned, the dependence on the traditional marine resource endowment is becoming smaller and smaller, and it depends more on advanced ocean equipment and marine science and technology. Therefore,moving towards deep and high sea, seeking great development and giving priority to the development of the ocean engineering equipment industry should become one of the priority development strategies for modern marine economy in Jiangsu Province.”Tao Yonghong put forward his views on the development of marine equipment and its industry in Jiangsu Province.

In 2012, the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee and the provincial government focused on the ocean engineering equipment industry as one of the ten strategic emerging industries in the province from a strategic point of view, and the mega ocean engineering equipment industry entered the track of rapid development. On the one hand, the backbone enterprises have significant advantages, five enterprises have entered the general assembly field of ocean engineering platform, and have received orders of ocean engineering platform to deliver products covering all kinds from offshore to deep sea. Among them, “Key Design and Manufacturing Technology of Deep Sea High Stability Cylindrical Drilling and Oil Storage Platform” won the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, and the“Jiaolong” 7000m manned submersible was successfully tested at sea, which shows that Jiangsu advantages in deep sea products and mainstream products are gradually taking shape. On the other hand,Jiangsu Province has built a number of high-level ocean engineering equipment infrastructure, and formed an ocean engineering equipment construction base in central Jiangsu with Nantong as the core. Through the adoption of differential competition and interregional dislocation development, significant base scale effect and regional aggregation effect have been obtained. In addition, Jiangsu Province's ocean engineering supporting industry has also made coordinated development. In recent years, Jiangsu Province has relied on backbone enterprises, strengthened supporting cooperation, extended industrial chain, focused on supporting the R&D and production of a number of key supporting equipment, and gradually expanded the market of key ocean engineering supporting equipment.

Tao Yonghong said the development of mega ocean engineering equipment industry in Jiangsu Province has certain industrial advantages -- the economic base is very strong, the position of the first major shipbuilding province is solid,and the foundation of marine equipment industry is excellent, but at the same time,there are also some inherent deficiencies.First of all, the product R&D and design capability is weak, compared with the United States, Norway, France and other powerful countries, Jiangsu Province ocean engineering equipment R&D design capability is weak, core technology depends on foreign countries. Except a small number of backbone enterprises with certain R&D capability, such as Nantong COSCO Shipyard Co., Ltd.,most of ocean engineering enterprises still “borrow ships to go to sea”, and the basic design of ocean engineering equipment is basically introduced from abroad. Secondly, the ocean engineering production and equipment matching capacity is not strong. At present, the R&D, design and production of core supporting products of ocean engineering equipment in the world are monopolized by a small number of enterprises in European developed countries. The ocean engineering equipment supporting capacity of Jiangsu Province is seriously insufficient, and only a small number of low-end supporting equipment and mooring chain and other structural supporting products can be produced.Finally, the industrial chain of ocean engineering equipment has not yet been formed. Jiangsu Province ocean engineering equipment industrial chain is still in the construction stage,although with a good foundation in ocean engineering ships, ocean mooring chain,jack-up offshore oil drilling platform and other industrial chains, but overall, it can only be responsible for a small part subindustrial chain or key products in the entire industrial chain, many aspects (such as installation, maintenance) are basically blank; it has design capacity of only a few product categories in ocean engineering producer services, while testing equipment, inspection and certification basically rely on foreign companies.

“Jiangsu will take the lead in moving to deep and high sea and will rely more on advanced ocean engineering equipment and marine science and technology. It is suggested that excellent ocean engineering equipment enterprises should be supported to stand out in the reshuffle of the industry.” Tao Yonghong put forward some suggestions for the development of mega ocean engineering equipment industry in Jiangsu Province:First is to stabilize the oil and gas ocean engineering industry, expand mega offshore oil platforms, strengthen ocean engineering vessels, refine ocean engineering modules. Secondly,expand emerging ocean engineering industry, encourage R&D of new marine resources development equipment and its supporting equipment, large floating structures at sea. Thirdly, develop the ocean engineering equipment supporting industry, expand the ocean engineering equipment supporting industry, and elongate the ocean engineering equipment supporting industrial chain. Fourthly,promote scientific and technological innovation and technical service, support ocean engineering R&D and technical service enterprise construction, and build a sharing platform for ocean engineering technical service. Fifthly, plan the layout of higher education disciplines and specialties related to the sea, and form a complete education system of disciplines and specialties.