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In 2013, Norwegian Seadrill took a fancy to the rapid development of Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Marine Engineering Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Dafune Offshore Engineering), and intended to sign an order for drilling platforms up to 10 billion yuan. Five years after the work was underway, the Norwegian company Seadrill suddenly unilaterally announced the cancellation of the order.
You must know that when the contract was signed, the Norwegian company Seadrill had issued many "overlord clauses" to large ship offshore workers.
And the big ships and offshore workers who are eager to develop can only secretly complain about this, and they have to bite the bullet.
A big ship enterprise like a big country: big ship offshore engineering
"I often walk by the river, where there are not wet shoes". Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, China has been seeking the rejuvenation of a great power with its own methods. In the face of the Western world, which has long been on the rise of the industrial revolution, China is often isolated and single-handedly forging its own path.
While developing day by day, China has also suffered hardships, suffered losses, been fooled, and bullied...
Speaking of the dumb losses that China has been forced to suffer in foreign trade and cooperation in recent years, one thing must be mentioned - the bankruptcy of China's shipbuilding enterprise "Big Ship Offshore Engineering" in 2013 was one of the largest overseas cooperation orders in China's history.
Let's first sort out the past and present life of this "big ship offshore worker".
Dalian Shipyard is the predecessor of "Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd." (later known as Dalian Heavy Industry). Dalian Shipyard has delivered the first "Type BING09000 semi-submersible offshore drilling platform" in mainland China. Later, "Dalian Heavy Industry" successfully delivered China's first "TU2000E type 400FT jack-up large offshore oil drilling platform" through unremitting efforts.
Subsequently, this outstanding shipbuilding enterprise was acquired by "China Shipbuilding Industry Group" and established a subsidiary, and "Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Marine Engineering Co., Ltd." (later known as Dashipbuilding Offshore Engineering) came into being.
It can be seen that this large ship offshore engineer has very strong qualifications, and at the same time has a very active development posture.
Aggressive, regardless of the lessons of the past, he ended up on fire
So in 2013, Norwegian Seadrill took a look at this promising Chinese company. Therefore, he threw an olive branch to China's "Big Ship Offshore Engineering", intending to sign a "big order" for 8 offshore drilling platforms with "Big Ship Offshore Engineering"!
Seadrill is one of Norway's most famous shipping giants and is even influential throughout Europe.
There is such a huge order; There is such an influential partner. "Big Ship Offshore Engineering" may take this order as a springboard to go to the world in one fell swoop!
At that time, the "young and vigorous" big ship offshore workers also thought so. Seadrill, the "big party", they will take it anyway. Even if it's a small loss...
In fact, in the middle and late last century and even the beginning of the 21st century, because of the sinister intentions of the Western world, many of China's foreign cooperation projects were hollowed out. Even some country-level cooperation is often aimed at China, and many projects are "yellowed".
However, the big ship offshore workers did not think much about this. I just wanted to "negotiate" with Seadrill and win the cooperation.
Faced with such a desperate large-scale offshore worker, Seadrill began to think of a "bad idea":
Seadrill requested that the originally agreed 30 percent advance be lowered to 10 percent.
It also requires that all disputes arising from the contract be litigated through the Norwegian courts.
This is tantamount to an overlord clause! First of all, the advance payment is the primary regulation that restricts the good faith transaction between the parties to the contract, and if the advance payment is too low, once "Party A" repents of the contract, "Party B" will bear more economic losses; And the operating costs of projects up to 13 billion yuan are also quite high, and the 10% advance payment means that the large ship offshore engineering will pay more construction costs.
If the funds are not working well, it will cause a lot of trouble. Secondly, if the dispute arising from the contract is subject to a single arbitration by the Norwegian party, it is conceivable that the beneficiary is definitely the Norwegian company Seadrill.
This is exactly a pit dug by Seadrill for big ship offshore workers! But the big ship and offshore workers still have to jump in hard!
"Party A" with evil intentions
Five years after the project began, Seadrill began what seemed like a long-planned "conspiracy."
In 2018, Seadrill suddenly requested to withdraw orders for six of the rigs. You know, because the previous advance payment was only 1.3 billion yuan, the big ship offshore engineering at this time was already heavily in debt for the project.
However, in March of the following year, Seadrill offered to cancel the order for a seventh rig.
At this point, the big ship and offshore workers have lost their blood. They saw Seadrill's conspiracy and demanded termination of the contract with Seadrill. However, they did not accede to this request on the grounds that the request of the large ship offshore workers was unlawful.
What can be done if the party to the contract arbitrator is on the Norwegian side? Big ship offshore workers can only bite the bullet and continue to work. Unexpectedly, however, Seadrill requested the cancellation of the eighth rig in April...
What's more, they demanded that the big ship offshore workers return the 10% advance payment that had already been paid!
Seadrill's argument for canceling these orders is: after five years of construction, Big Ship Offshore is heavily in debt and may have a bankruptcy crisis, and after research and consideration, it no longer trusts the construction capacity of Big Ship Offshore and "helplessly" cancels the order.
At this time, the big ship offshore workers not only had to bear the huge project loan alone, but also had to return Seadrill's 1.3 billion advance payment.
At this point, the big ship offshore industry could not withstand the huge economic pressure and declared bankruptcy.
China: My company, I'll figure it out!
This is a lesson in the face of losses suffered by Chinese companies internationally, but China will not ignore it.
Because Big Ship Offshore has a high status in China's shipbuilding industry, it also has a complete set of shipbuilding systems, Big Ship Offshore is a private enterprise, under the enterprise there is an extremely large labor force, these labor forces can not lose their jobs. So the Chinese side decided to help them.
Through a series of work such as credit turnover and taking over the ownership of idle drilling platforms, it finally helped the big ship offshore workers to survive the serious economic crisis.
The world is in dire straits, and we carry the weight forward
At the end of the matter, we quietly reviewed the context of the whole incident. Seadrill's heavily traced "conspiracy" is clearly visible. First of all, Norway belongs to the camp of Western countries, and during the entire incident, China's international relations with the United States were not optimistic. And is it done deliberately for the West to see? The results are clearly very obvious.
It can be seen that China has a long way to go on the road of development, and there are many "partners" in the world who are hostile to China. They keep an eye on China and try in every possible way to calculate.
The Chinese side is completely powerless to refute this incident, and we need to carefully reflect on our own problems, keep a clear head on international trade cooperation, and not be blinded by some "Western capital" because of our immediate interests.