Three Major Oil Companies: PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC

        As the core power equipment for compressed air, air compressors are key infrastructure for the entire industrial chain of oil and gas extraction, refining and chemicals, and storage and sales for the three major oil companies—PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC. They run through core scenarios such as onshore oilfields, offshore platforms, refining and chemical bases, and long-distance pipelines. With their characteristics of high-pressure stability, explosion-proof reliability, and clean low consumption, they ensure production safety, process continuity, and energy efficiency improvement for oil companies, serving as the “power heart” of the energy industry.

        In the oil and gas extraction stage, air compressors are the core power source for drilling and oil production operations. PetroChina's onshore oilfields (such as Shunbei and Tahe oilfields) and CNOOC's offshore platforms (such as the Lufeng 8-1DPP platform) generally use explosion-proof screw air compressors to provide high-pressure airflow for the drilling mud circulation system, driving drilling fluid to carry cuttings back to the surface and maintaining wellbore pressure balance to ensure safe drilling progress. In the oil production stage, air compressors support gas-lift oil recovery and water-flooding oil displacement processes, injecting high-pressure air into the oil reservoir to supplement formation energy and improve crude oil recovery rates. For example, the Xinran 500kW high-power screw air compressor, with a rated pressure of up to 16 bar, is specifically designed for oilfield injection wells and has been applied in multiple well stabilization projects of PetroChina, helping old wells resume production and increase efficiency. At the same time, offshore platform air compressors need to adapt to high-salt-spray and highly corrosive environments, using anti-corrosion skid-mounted designs to meet the stringent requirements of CNOOC's offshore operations.

        Entering the refining and chemical processing stage, air compressors are the core guarantee for process stability and safety control. In large-scale refining and chemical projects such as Sinopec's Zhenhai Refining, Yangzi Petrochemical, and Hainan Ethylene Base, centrifugal process air compressors are widely used to provide regenerator fluidizing air for catalytic cracking units, with stable pressure at 1.0–1.5 MPa, maintaining catalyst circulation activity and ensuring continuous operation of million-ton-level units. In processes such as hydrocracking and gas separation, air compressors compress feed gas to 0.6–0.8 MPa to provide power for cryogenic separation, producing high-purity oxygen and nitrogen gases to meet chemical reaction and protection needs. In addition, refining and chemical plant instrumentation and pneumatic systems are highly dependent on air compressors: they provide clean and dry air sources (dew point ≤ -40°C) for instruments such as pressure transmitters and flow meters, and provide rapid response power for emergency shutdown valves (ESD), completing valve opening and closing within 0.5 seconds to prevent leakage risks of flammable and explosive media. This is the standard safety design for explosion-proof areas in PetroChina and Sinopec.

        In the oil and gas storage, transportation, and pipeline delivery stage, air compressors ensure storage safety and delivery efficiency. In the crude oil depots and LNG tank areas of the three major oil companies, air compressors drive tank breather valve systems to automatically regulate tank internal pressure, preventing tank collapse or overpressure caused by temperature changes. Dry compressed air is regularly used for tank tightness testing to promptly detect leakage points. For long-distance pipelines, air compressors provide power for natural gas booster stations, with multi-stage compression increasing delivery pressure to ensure cross-regional pipeline delivery efficiency. At the same time, they drive intelligent pigging devices to remove scale and impurities from the inner pipe walls, maintaining delivery capacity and extending pipeline service life. PetroChina's West-East Gas Pipeline and CNOOC's submarine pipelines both adopt this solution. At dock loading and unloading areas, air compressors provide power for goose-neck sealing systems to prevent oil and gas volatilization and leakage, and drive pneumatic pumps to achieve precise quantitative loading of oil products, improving automation levels.

        The particularity of oil company scenarios determines that air compressors must meet stringent standards for explosion-proofing, oil-free operation, energy saving, and long-period operation. The three major oil companies all prioritize explosion-proof models that comply with ATEX and IECEx explosion-proof standards, eliminating explosion risks caused by electrical sparks. Oil-free air compressors are used for instrument and process gas to avoid oil mist contamination of products or clogging of precision instruments. At the same time, they are paired with variable frequency control and high-efficiency hosts; for example, permanent magnet variable frequency motors can achieve energy savings of more than 30%, aligning with the green and low-carbon transformation needs of oil companies. Currently, domestic air compressors have broken the foreign monopoly, with brands such as Xinran becoming qualified suppliers for the three major oil companies, achieving domestic substitution in key scenarios such as high-power injection wells and offshore platforms, helping oil companies reduce operation and maintenance costs and ensure energy security.

        In summary, air compressors are indispensable core equipment for the entire industrial chain of PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC, supporting oil company production and operations in all aspects from extraction to refining, from storage and transportation to safety control. As oil companies transform toward intelligence and green development, air compressors will upgrade in the direction of high efficiency and energy saving, intelligent monitoring, and extreme environment adaptation, continuously empowering national energy supply security and high-quality industrial development.