In the late spring of 202, a large area of rice fields in Hedong Village, Tantou Township, Rong'an County, Liuzhou, Guangxi Province, was still overgrown with wildflowers and weeds, and was not cultivated as in previous years. The arrival of surveyors and excavators shattered the tranquility. Beneath this earth, there is a considerable underground treasure - shale gas, which is expected to be extracted and become the clean energy needed by mankind after sleeping for hundreds of millions of years.
Located at the junction of Liucheng, Rong'an and Rongshui in Liuzhou City, this area is the Liucheng North Block, Guangxi's first shale gas development demonstration project, covering an area of about 122 square kilometers and with an estimated recoverable resource of 3.1 billion cubic meters. Faced with the goal of achieving the goal of trial production gas production by the end of this year, Qin Yinglun, as the technical leader, is under a lot of pressure, but more excited and proud.
After graduating from China University of Geosciences with a master's degree in 2016, Qin Yinglun joined the Oil and Gas Resources Survey Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China. In 2018, he became the head of the Guangxi shale gas resources investigation project team and led the team to carry out a three-year exploration in the central area of Guangxi. At the beginning of 2020, Qin's team successfully identified shale gas in Rong'an that could be commercially exploited. This discovery is of great significance and will help alleviate Guangxi's energy dilemma of "lack of coal, oil and gas".
The reserves of shale gas in mainland China rank first in the world, and in recent years, large-scale and commercial development of shale gas has been formed in Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou and other places. Guangxi's recoverable shale gas resources are about 1.02 trillion cubic meters, ranking sixth in the country.
In the context of the national energy transition and the "dual carbon" strategy, Guangxi has also begun to pay attention to the development of the shale gas industry. In November 2019, Guangxi Guangtou Group entrusted the Oil and Gas Survey Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources to carry out the evaluation of the potential of shale gas resources in Guangxi. Qin Yinglun took the initiative to ask for help and continued to pay attention to the progress of shale gas exploration in his hometown Guangxi. In the process of carrying out research projects, his talent, ability and passion have impressed the leaders of GTI. In February 2021, when the GDI Group set up a shale gas project team, it was the first to extend an olive branch to Qin Yinglun. The 31-year-old returned to Guangxi to serve as deputy head of the Guangtou Group's shale gas industry development working group.
Shale gas is one of the 14 important strategic minerals in the country, and the establishment, approval and transfer rights of the block are all in the Ministry of Natural Resources. How to get government departments at all levels to accept shale gas as a new thing and new industry has become the first topic of Qin Yinglun after coming to GTI. Under his leadership, the feasibility review of the Guangxi shale gas project was highly recognized by academicians and experts from authoritative domestic oil and gas exploration and development research institutions in August 2021. Eight months later, he helped GDI Group successfully bid for two shale gas exploration rights in the north of Liucheng County and Luzhai County in Liuzhou City.
On December 12, 2022, at the 2022 Guangxi Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition of "Qingchuang Bagui", Qin Yinglun delivered a speech on behalf of the team on the prospects and planning of the "Guangxi's first batch of shale gas block exploration and development" project, and won the high score of the judges with good performance, and finally won the first prize of the competition.
Although the prospects are broad, Guangxi's shale gas industry started late, the research foundation is weak, and the geological conditions are more complex than those in the Sichuan Basin. The return of Huang Guixiong, a senior expert of Sinopec, can be described as a relief in the snow.
Huang Guixiong, a native of Pingnan, Guangxi, was the deputy chief geologist and director of the exploration department of the Northeast Petroleum Bureau, with superb oil and gas exploration and development technology and rich management experience. Having just retired in March 2022, he took the initiative to apply to contribute after learning that GDI Group had taken the lead in launching the development of Guangxi's shale gas industry.
Huang Guixiong has been working in Jilin for a long time, and later met Huang Danian, a model of returnee science and technology to serve the country and a famous geophysicist, and the two formed a deep friendship. Huang Danian's enthusiasm for geological exploration, which is also from Guangxi, has deeply influenced Huang Guixiong. He said: "In 2016, I accompanied Mr. Huang Danian back to Guangxi to discuss how we could use what we had learned to serve Guangxi. At that time, an important direction to explore was in this energy field, such as finding oil and gas. Later, unfortunately Mr. Huang passed away in 2017, so I have been thinking about how to use what kind of opportunity to return to Guangxi in the future and continue our unfinished business of Mr. Huang. ”
The shale gas development team of GDI Group was established from 0 and now has 15 members, including 4 doctors, and a number of oil and gas exploration experts, specializing in oil and gas geology, drilling and production engineering, oil and gas storage and transportation required for shale gas field development.
On March 30, 2023, Guangxi's first shale gas development demonstration project, promoted by the Guangzhou Investment Group, was fully launched, taking a solid step towards realizing the "zero breakthrough" in Guangxi's shale gas development and the beautiful vision of "Guangxi gas for Guangxi people".
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to increase the exploration and development of oil and gas resources, increase reserves and production, strengthen the construction of energy production, supply, storage and marketing system, and ensure energy security. In the vast mountains and wilderness, there is vigorous life. In order to make a breakthrough in Guangxi's shale gas zero, Qin Yinglun and his colleagues are speeding up on a new journey.
Under the dual pressure of global energy tightening and energy conservation and emission reduction, wind power has become the most sought-after renewable energy in recent years. In the past, most of China's wind farms were built in land areas with abundant wind resources, but due to the occupation of land resources and the generation of noise, Chinese wind power people have begun to set their sights on the wider ocean.
In 2023, Guangxi, one of the few virgin offshore wind power development sites in coastal provinces, is catching up with large-scale offshore wind energy resources, kicking off offshore wind power construction.
The southern sea area of Fangchenggang, which is 16 kilometers away from the coast, is the site of Fangchenggang Offshore Wind Power Demonstration Project A. Nearly 100 square kilometers of blue sea, 83 wind turbines will be born. As the first offshore wind power project in Guangxi, every step of its progress has attracted attention.
The construction of offshore wind farms is a systematic project, which requires piling on the seabed, then hoisting towers, wind turbines and blades, the blades rotating to convert wind energy into electricity, and then connecting the wind turbines through submarine cables and transmitting power to the onshore power grid.
On July 26, 2023, on the rock-socketed platform numbered A16, the builders carried out the pile foundation work 24 hours a day. If all goes well, the first offshore wind turbine in Guangxi's Beibu Gulf will be erected here in 20 days.
While onshore wind turbines only require a concrete slab that is thick enough to support them, offshore wind requires complex foundations to connect the seabed and support the safe operation of the upper wind turbines over a life cycle of 20 to 30 years. Since most of the seabed of the entire Fangchenggang A site is bare rock, it means that all pile foundations can only be drilled into rock. As a result, the wind farm is the world's first offshore wind project to use an entirely rock-socketed jacket.
After repeated demonstrations in terms of feasibility, safety, and economy, the designers finally determined the foundation scheme of the three-pile rock-socketed jacket. However, the construction of this scheme is difficult, the construction period is long, and the requirements for construction accuracy are also higher.
To build offshore wind turbines in the Beibu Gulf, builders need to face not only hard rock formations and complex geology, but also frequent impact and disturbance by strong winds and swells at sea. In the face of various challenges, can the pile foundation construction of the first wind turbine in Beibu Gulf deliver a qualified answer?
On August 1, 2023, the rock-socketing construction of the A16 stand entered the final stage. At this moment, thousands of miles away in Dongguan, Guangdong, the jacket began to be loaded and set off. The jacket is the base of the wind turbine, which is mainly composed of three parts: the grouting connection section, the jacket and the upper transition section. Up to 45 meters tall and weighing up to 750 tons.
The hoisting jacket directly tests whether the three piles are accurate vertical and horizontal, and the jacket installation alignment is below the water surface, and the construction operation is not visible. What's more testing is that this is a three-pile jacket with rock socketing that is rarely used in domestic offshore wind farms, and the installation experience is extremely lacking.
On August 12, 2023, the jacket began to be lifted and installed. Preparations were carried out throughout the day and continued late into the night. At around two o'clock in the morning, the tips of the three legs of the jacket were finally docked with the three engineering piles. However, a situation arose when the jacket continued to be lowered, and the legs could not be fully implanted with the socket piles anyway.
Although many simulations were carried out before hoisting, the gap range was not expected to be so small. The hoisting ship has been shaking under the influence of the waves, and the jacket has been impacted by the current after entering the water, and a slight deviation has made the jacket legs stuck.
One of the reasons for the deviation may be related to typhoons. In mid-July 2023, Typhoon No. 4 "Taili" violently hit the waters of Beibu Gulf, and the A16 rock-socketed platform was impacted, which had a little impact on the construction accuracy.
The construction crew wanted to use the adjustment of the crane to ensure that the jacket was lifted vertically. However, due to the high tide of the sea, the operation became more difficult, and from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m., there was no effect at all. The construction crew did not give up until 6 a.m., when the jacket finally went down more than half of the time. After some more efforts, at 12 noon on August 13, the jacket was finally fully placed in the pile. This jacket installation took more than half a day longer than planned. Although it was tortuous, it provided valuable experience for subsequent construction.
Although the tower hoisting link is not as difficult as the jacket installation, it is a great test of the meticulousness and patience of the construction personnel. The maximum diameter of the tower is 7.5 meters, and the weight of a single set is about 549 tons. The total height is 111 meters, which is equivalent to the height of a building of more than 30 floors. After three days of hard work, the hoisting of the first set of towers was successfully completed on August 16.
Next, the protagonists of wind turbines – wind turbines and blades – are about to appear. Each blade is 111.5 meters long and has a sweeping area of more than 40,000 square meters, which is close to the size of six standard football fields. The center of the hub is more than 130 meters above the sea surface, which is equivalent to the height of more than 40 floors. The construction personnel used the crane to complete the needle threading with high precision requirements at an altitude of 100 meters.
Although the installation technology is very mature, it is still not easy to successfully install such a large and expensive part. Since the blade itself is made of FRP material, it is very fragile. If there is a small wobble, the resulting lateral forces can cause damage to the blades. During the four days of slow progress, the engineers worked around the clock, without stopping.
On August 19, 2023, with the successful docking of the last blade with the hub at an altitude of 100 meters, Guangxi's first offshore wind turbine was hoisted as scheduled, which is a historic moment.
On January 28 this year, the first batch of units of Guangxi's first offshore wind power project, the Fangchenggang Offshore Wind Power Demonstration Project, was successfully connected to the grid for power generation, which is expected to drive industrial investment of more than 20 billion yuan and build a 10 million kilowatt offshore wind power base and a 100 billion-level offshore wind power industrial cluster in Beibu Gulf.
The wind rises in the Gulf of Tonkin and electricity comes from the sea. On the new journey of accelerating green and low-carbon development and building a harmonious coexistence between man and nature, we look forward to seeing more "Haiyan" walking and dancing with the wind on the sea surface of Guangxi.
For more details, please watch "Our New Journey" broadcast by Guangxi Satellite TV at 21:20 today.