To prepare recovery of global offshore engineering market and demands arising from it, Chinese experts have stressed that China needs to expedite progress to dominate the global market through boosting core competitiveness in the area.

According to Xinhua, Gao Shang, General Director of Offshore Division at China International Marine Containers (Group) LTD. (CIMC) said that China’s offshore engineering ability is limited to construction of facilities such as offshore drilling facility, offshore supply vessel and so on, while countries like the North America and Europe early hurried in the area and is now dominating global offshore engineering market. Mr. Gao stressed the necessity of improving capability in the sector.

Also, Bao Zhangjing, Director, China Shipbuilding Industry Research Center said, “Based on current status of global energy supply and demand with oil price situation, it is forecasted that demands for drilling platform, production platform, offshore supply vessel will sharply increase. During the period of 2014-2020, annual average demands in the market are expected to reach around $50bn.”

With this enormous market, China has worked hard for development in offshore sector for the past few years. As a result, the country has topped in global jackup platform market with over 30% share, sharply up from 7% in 2006.

However, local experts say that the offshore sector is a technology- and capital-intensive industry and also point out that China has developed only low value area.

Wang Jinlian, secretary-general of CANSI, said, “China, mainly building jackup platform, anchor handling tug vessel, platform supply vessel and etc., relatively lacks in-house R&D, project engineering and creativity,” and indicated, “The reason is the absence of core technology and engineering ability for high value vessels.”

Mr. Wang also added that drilling and other facilities account for 60% of the value in structure of offshore drilling platform with the remainder 40% is taken by raw material, labor force and profits. He stressed that independent ability of production and R&D for facilities must be promoted, otherwise, the profits will decrease only by growing labor forces.

Gao Shang, General Director of Offshore Division at China International Marine Containers (Group) LTD. (CIMC), noted that business expansion into high value industry is the most basic condition for development. With the international trend, China needs to further firm up the foundation of what it has already achieved success of, for instance, construction of hull and etc. With this, Mr. Gao stressed that China needs to expand its capability into high value sectors R&D and so on.