China's first domestically developed large-scale offshore fracturing vessel, Haiyang Shiyou 696, sails in waters off Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang Province. Photo: Screenshot from CCTV's website

China's first domestically designed and built integrated large-scale offshore fracturing vessel, Haiyang Shiyou 696, was delivered in Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang Province, on Tuesday, marking a breakthrough in the country's offshore oil and gas fracturing technology, state broadcaster CCTV News reported.

The vessel, the world's largest of its kind, is designed to support large-scale offshore fracturing operations across China's seas, including batch fracturing of multiple wells as well as operations for gas wells and ultra-deep formations, the developer China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) said in a statement.

The latest development expected to enhance the country's offshore oil and gas development and help safeguard national energy security, according to the CCTV News report.

Large-scale fracturing vessels are a central piece of engineering equipment for efficiently developing offshore oil and gas fields with low permeability and poor fluid mobility. Haiyang Shiyou 696 measures 99.8 meters in length and has a deck area roughly equivalent to three and a half standard basketball courts, making it the largest vessel of its kind in the world.

The vessel is equipped with a full suite of fracturing systems capable of carrying out high-displacement, high-power offshore fracturing operations. Its overall technical performance ranks among the leading vessels globally in the same category.

According to CSSC, the delivery marks a major breakthrough for China in offshore oilfield fracturing technology and engineering, ending the long-standing tech monopoly and restrictions previously held by foreign companies.

The vessel also features strong continuous-operation capability and large onboard storage capacity. "It can pump up to 12 cubic meters of fracturing slurry per minute — roughly equivalent to filling a household bathtub in about two seconds - enabling the development of oil and gas resources that were previously difficult to extract," Xu Jie, a general manager at China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC) Tianjin branch, the vessel's operator, was quoted as saying by CCTV.

Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the development of advanced offshore engineering equipment reflects China's broader efforts to strengthen its marine energy capabilities. As offshore oil and gas resources are expected to play a more important role in the country's future energy supply, improving the efficiency and reliability of offshore operations has become increasingly important for supporting stable domestic energy production, he added.

Hydraulic fracturing involves injecting fluid into underground formations at high pressure to create fractures in the rock, opening pathways for oil and gas to flow and significantly improving the recovery of previously hard-to-extract resources, CCTV News reported.

China holds abundant offshore reserves of low-permeability oil and gas resources that are widely distributed. However, due to the complex offshore operating environment, large-scale fracturing operations have long been difficult to implement efficiently, according to CCTV news. 

To address the challenge, the design team adopted an innovative layered layout, integrating a full set of fracturing equipment across four decks to maximize operational capacity within the vessel's limited space. The vessel is the first of its kind globally to use a fully electric drive system, significantly improving power efficiency and enabling continuous operations under varying sea conditions. Its endurance exceeds 10,000 nautical miles, the CCTV News reported.

"The vessel is equipped with China's first offshore intelligent fracturing command center, which enables real-time data collection, analysis and decision support throughout the fracturing process, significantly improving operational safety and efficiency," said Zhang Ming, a chief engineer at a research institute under CNOOC's Tianjin branch.

Developed independently by the Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute under CSSC and custom-built for the Tianjin branch of CNOOC, Haiyang Shiyou 696 will soon operate in the Bohai Sea and other offshore areas, according to CCTV.