The final core module of the Yamal project, the world's largest liquefied natural gas project, was shipped off the ship in Qingdao today (August 16), marking China's entry into the first tier of international liquefied natural gas (LNG) construction by successfully mastering the core construction technology.

With compressor modules more than ten stories high and weighing more than 10,000 tons shipped to the Arctic, 36 core modules of liquefied natural gas (LNG) with a total weight of 180,000 tons contracted by China for the first time were completed.

Yamal project is the largest economic cooperation project between China and Russia and the world's first polar natural gas exploration and development, liquefaction, transportation and sales integration project. The project is located in the Arctic Circle, where the lowest temperature reaches minus 52 degrees Celsius. In order to shorten the construction period and save construction costs, most of the buildings are constructed in a modular way.

Jin Xiaojian, President of CNOOC: As for large modules, we use factories to manufacture factories. The factories are made into modules of thousands of tons and then assembled. The requirements of the group are also very high, which is a global challenge.

CNOOC undertook the "heart" module of the whole project, with a total price of more than 10 billion yuan. The variety and quantity of the internal components of these modules, their high requirements for accuracy and the complexity of the construction technology far exceed similar projects in the industry. The total length of the pipeline is more than 200,000 meters, equivalent to the length of Beijing's Sixth Ring Road. Laying 3.3 million meters of cable, which can connect Beijing to the Arctic Circle; Seven million pages of finished documents could fill two garages.

The Yamal project is designed to produce 28 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 1 million tons of condensate per year. When fully operational, the project will sell at least 4 million tons of LNG to the Chinese market each year.

Mixture gas plant

The severe cold is the biggest difficulty that the Yamal project needs to face. In this regard, Chinese enterprises have broken the foreign technology monopoly and broken through a series of construction and technical problems.

The Yamal project is located in an extremely cold region, and all key equipment and pipelines have to be dressed in special insulation clothing -- foam glass. Foam glass cutting is particularly important in engineering, once the foam glass problem, the whole project will have disastrous consequences. And this special material cutting technology by Singapore and a few foreign companies long - term monopoly.

Yamal project general manager Chen P&G: The construction of the whole foam glass reached more than 30,000 cubic meters. If we do not master this technology, transport to Singapore for cutting, and then transport back, the construction schedule can not be guaranteed.

The foamed glass cutting machine scientific research group was established, and the cutting technology was independently developed. After five months of continuous experiments, the world's first semi-automatic foamed glass cutting equipment was successfully born. Compared with manual cutting, the efficiency is improved by 3 times, and the material cutting loss is reduced from 50% to 28%. This alone saved over 40 million yuan in costs.

Yamal project general manager Chen P&G said, "We can ensure the construction progress and quality of our construction, and after breaking their monopoly, we will carry out the construction of similar projects in the future, laying a foundation."

Independent research and development of cryogenic insulation material cutting technology, breakthrough in welding technology, breaking the international monopoly in painting process...... Each technological breakthrough enabled the Yamal project to be successfully constructed, enabling CNOOC to achieve a leap-forward development from a single product to the general contractor of the project and from low-end manufacturing to high-end manufacturing, thus making China one of the "first echelon" of international liquefied natural gas module construction.