Aerial view of Xijiang 23-1 offshore oil field. (PHOTO: XINHUA)

By Staff Reporters

Over more than 12 years' development, Xuanji, China's homegrown oil and gas drilling system has worked well in 1,000 wells, with an accumulated drilling distance of one million meters, said its developer China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) on March 3.

The Xuanji system consists of rotary steerable drilling (RSD) and logging-while-drilling (LWD) technologies for efficient exploration of oil and gas. With it, engineers can accurately control the drill bit thousands of meters underground to target oil layers and remotely drive the drill to stably traverse more than 1,000 meters horizontally, or obliquely, in the one -meter thin oil layer, according to CNOOC.

Meanwhile, the system can analyze stratigraphic data in real time, thus largely reducing the exploration of oil and gas resources cost. It is widely used for the efficient development of oil, gas, shale gas and coal bed gas extraction.

However, RSD technology had been monopolized by three international oilfield service companies in the U.S. for more than 20 years, until China successfully developed Xuanji and put it into commercial use in 2014.

Since its first commercial use, the Xuanji system has been put through tens of thousands of reliability verifications, structural optimizations and upgrades. Currently, its success rate has reached 92 percent, a global leading level, said Shang Jie, an engineer from the CNOOC.

The system has been gradually promoted in oil or gas fields across China and along its coastal lines, and has been exported to countries such as Indonesia and Iraq.

On April 20, 2022, the first intelligent production line using the Xuanji system was put into operation in Foshan city, south China's Guangdong province. In August of that year, CNOOC launched a global service center for the Xuanji system, which can provide 24/7 online support for 12 countries and regions simultaneously.