China National Offshore Oil Engineering has announced the groundbreaking of its biggest international offshore project - Bul Hanine EPIC in Qatar - a major offshore oil and gas engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning project with a total contract value of $4 billion.

The project is being developed in the Bul Hanine oilfield by QatarEnergy. It involves the construction of more than 60 standalone offshore oil and gas facilities and 40 subsea pipelines and cables, as well as modification of in‑service platforms and decommissioning and removal of obsolete platforms.

The China National Offshore Oil Engineering is undertaking the project under an integrated EPIC scope covering engineering, procurement, fabrication, transportation, offshore installation and commissioning.

The project will require over 130,000 tonnes of steel and covers the entire chain of design, procurement, construction, transportation, installation and commissioning.

The project team has established a full‑cycle integrated management and control mechanism, with dedicated plans developed for key links including process interfaces, risk isolation and resource allocation. 

Leveraging China’s complete offshore engineering full‑industrial‑chain strengths and achievements in digital transformation, the team will extensively deploy 3D digital modeling and full‑process engineering simulation technologies to deliver a benchmark project for international oil and gas cooperation, it stated.

In recent years, COOEC has continued to expand its presence in the international high-end offshore energy engineering market. It secured over 170 overseas projects and successfully delivered a number of landmark projects with broad international influence, including Canada LNG, the Penguins FPSO, and Saudi Arabia's Marjan project, it added.