Few people probably know better than Zhang Haonan what the seafloor 3,000 meters deep looks like. In the mysterious depths of the ocean, there are mountains, river channels, and depressions, and the deep strata hold abundant oil and gas resources. The youth innovation team led by Zhang Haonan is a group of people who paint portraits of the seafloor.

　　The innovation studio named after this young geophysical engineer—the "Zhang Haonan Youth Innovation Studio"—is a light that China Oilfield Services Limited (hereinafter referred to as "COSL") has lit to illuminate the path for young scientific and technological workers exploring the deep sea. Today, the domestically developed marine seismic exploration equipment that these young people participated in developing—the "Haijing" system and "Haimai"—has installed a "Chinese heart" in China's deepwater geophysical vessels, enabling them to perform a "CT scan" of the seafloor. This year, on Youth Day, Zhang Haonan's team was also awarded the 23rd Tianjin Youth May Fourth Medal.

　　The Bohai Oilfield is China's largest offshore oilfield. As the country's largest crude oil production base, it has discovered an oilfield of the 100-million-ton scale through exploration every year for the past three years. This achievement would not have been possible without the strong momentum generated by the convergence of young talent.

　　Ji Ruixiao, secretary of the Communist Youth League Committee of COSL, told reporters that starting in 2021, the Communist Youth League Committee of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) took the lead in launching a pilot program of "Youth Innovation Studios" at COSL to stimulate the wisdom and creativity of young people. The 22 youth innovation studios established successively are 22 youth scientific research task forces, active in various fields such as increasing and stabilizing production at offshore oil and gas fields, geophysical exploration, drilling services, and oilfield technical services, becoming the vanguard and main force of deep-sea oil exploration in the new era.

　　Let young people who want to do things and are capable of doing things "take command and go into battle"

　　To find oil and gas resources in the vast depths of the sea, one must first understand the stratigraphic structure of the seafloor. At present, the most direct method is seismic exploration—that is, first taking a "CT scan" of the seafloor. This set of domestically developed marine seismic exploration equipment has a pleasant name—"Haijing."

　　"Haijing" taking a "CT scan" of the sea is not simple. A deepwater geophysical vessel travels at sea, trailing 12 long seismic exploration cables behind it, each nearly 10,000 meters long, like a giant net cast into the ocean. Zhang Haonan told reporters that this "net" can explore 10 square kilometers of sea area at a time, an area equivalent to more than 1,400 standard football fields.

　　The cables are loaded with many precision exploration instruments inside, which, like stethoscopes, collect information while transmitting it. They can precisely "hear" weak reflected signals from strata ten thousand meters deep.

　　The integrated navigation system is one of the important components of the "Haijing" complete set of equipment and is called the "brain" of the geophysical vessel.

　　However, this technology was long monopolized by foreign countries. In addition to purchasing the system, an annual system license fee had to be paid to foreign parties before it could be used. By 2019, the validity period of a single authorization had even been compressed to half a month, making it a typical "bottleneck" technology in China's offshore oil sector.

　　As a core member of the youth task force, Zhang Haonan, under the guidance of expert mentor Ruan Fuming, volunteered to join the R&D team and began technical research on the development and industrialized manufacturing of a complete set of marine seismic exploration equipment systems. The integrated navigation system needs to simultaneously control hundreds of devices such as the cables towed behind the vessel and air guns, while also performing real-time dynamic calculations of massive amounts of data. Zhang Haonan and his colleagues consulted literature and materials and repeatedly overturned and rebuilt models, but for a long time they could not find a technical breakthrough.

　　Later, they drew inspiration from the error-processing model of BeiDou navigation and innovatively proposed "a towed-cable positioning model based on curve fitting." After more than 500 days and nights of hard work, this young team completed the writing of 38,000 lines of core algorithm code. After more than a hundred rounds of deduction and five sea trials, they finally completed the development of China's first three-dimensional towed-cable integrated navigation system, breaking the foreign technology monopoly and firmly grasping equipment manufacturing technology in their own hands.

　　Ji Ruixiao said that the youth innovation studios implement a "open competition for leadership" mechanism, regardless of seniority and with no thresholds, precisely to give young scientific and technological personnel who are newly emerged but truly talented a place to put their abilities to use, and to give young scientific and technological talent who want to do things, are capable of doing things, and can accomplish things the opportunity to "take command, gather the team, and go into battle."

　　Stimulating the vitality of scientific and technological innovation

　　Exploration of offshore oil and gas reservoirs in China is difficult, and there is growing demand for exploration and development of deepwater and deep-strata oil and gas resources, urgently requiring the support of an innovative talent team with a high technical level and strong research capabilities.

　　The Zhang Haonan Youth Innovation Studio provides a stage for a group of young people with innovative passion and ability to display their talents. This group of young people, each with their own special skills, has an average age of around 30, and more than 80% hold master's or doctoral degrees. Some are technically outstanding, and some are good at scientific research. Centering on three series of equipment—towed-cable acquisition, seabed cable, and seabed node—they have respectively established task groups to continuously carry out technological innovation, greatly accelerating the industrialization of independent equipment and the process of domestic substitution.

　　Chen Xingyu was only 29 years old when he voluntarily took on the task of developing the software for the "Haijing" acquisition system. At that time, the team received an on-site operational requirement to develop a continuous acquisition function for the "Haijing" system within one month, which previously would have taken at least several months. Chen Xingyu used his professional expertise to complete the preliminary development work in just one month. Afterward, he rushed to the site with the fleet and quickly solved the problems that arose in the actual operation of the software.

　　Fleet operations run around the clock, and the system also runs continuously 24 hours a day. No matter day or night, as long as a problem was exposed, Chen Xingyu would rush to the scene as soon as possible and solve it quickly. After more than 60 consecutive days of operation, the domestically developed "Haijing" system successfully completed the continuous acquisition operations that previously only foreign equipment could achieve, greatly improving the operational efficiency and quality of the domestic system.

　　Keeping a cable ten thousand meters long balanced and stable at all times while it is towed through the sea for scanning is a difficult problem. So the team installed a device with "little wings" on the cable—the compass bird—to monitor and control the cable. The domestication process for this small device was also very complex.

　　When 26-year-old Jing Zhongwu learned that the depth control of the domestically developed "Haijing" compass bird could not meet the requirements of towed-cable seismic acquisition operations, he and several young people studied knowledge from multiple disciplines such as mechanics, electronics, and underwater acoustic communication, carried out tens of thousands of indoor tests, and went to sea dozens of times with vessels for sea trials. Eventually, the domestically developed compass bird was successfully developed, and all its performance indicators reached the international first-class level.

　　Young people's creativity becomes an inexhaustible driving force for development

　　Heavy oil reserves account for more than 50% of the Bohai Oilfield. Thermal recovery is the most effective method for heavy oil development, but for offshore oilfields, only multiple rounds of steam huff-and-puff can achieve economically effective development, which requires raising the temperature resistance index of the sand control system from 150°C to 350°C.

　　Resistant to high temperature and high pressure and also required to withstand multiple rounds of alternating hot and cold, this thermal recovery sand control technology has long been an industry challenge. The Xu Fengxiang Youth Innovation Studio tackled this "hard bone" and, through technological research, developed key technologies for long-effective thermal recovery sand control with high temperature resistance, excellent alternating hot-cold performance, and long service life, filling a domestic technological gap. Appraised by the Tianjin Science and Technology Evaluation Center, it reached the international leading level.

　　As the technical leader, Xu Fengxiang not only broke through multiple "industry-level" and "bottleneck" technical problems, but also, as a "pioneer" of achievement transformation, realized the large-scale application of open-hole gravel pack sand control tools, generating more than 100 million yuan in real revenue for the enterprise. The team also received multiple honors and bonus incentives as a result.

　　Today at COSL, a "pyramid"-shaped scientific research talent training structure has been established, consisting of "discipline building and basic research—key scientific research projects—mass innovation and efficiency creation." Young employees proactively shoulder responsibilities, think of ideas, and explore paths, and tackling and resolving on-site technical problems has become a refreshing trend that drives everyone forward.

　　Every innovation adheres to a demand orientation and problem orientation. While opening wide the channels for discussion and encouraging open "mass innovation" discussions, COSL also reduces the burden on innovation by working with functional departments such as procurement, finance, and human resources to clear "mid-stream blockages" in management processes, simplify procedures, and increase incentives, so that everyone can innovate with free hands.

　　Not only that, COSL has set up a 6 million yuan "Mass Innovation Fund Pool" to support innovation and has increased incentives. It has also hired 54 two-level technical skills experts or young talents as mass innovation mentors, forming a full-chain training model of "watch others do it, be led in doing it, learn to do it, and do it independently," making innovation and efficiency creation work concrete and routine.

　　Not long ago, at a youth innovation achievement exhibition organized by the Communist Youth League organization of Tianjin Binhai New Area, 10 youth innovation studios from COSL presented 22 innovation achievements. Ji Ruixiao said that old oilfields cannot achieve high-quality development without continuous innovation. "Every project comes from the frontline at the grassroots level, and young people's creativity is becoming an inexhaustible driving force for development."