The development of offshore oil and gas mainly includes exploration, drilling, mining, processing, and external transmission. Each link corresponds to different oil and gas equipment and technologies. The process of offshore oil and gas development is as follows:

Exploration stage: Through the arrangement of underwater devices such as seismic acquisition cables and water birds on the operating ship, the compressed air gun is slowly lowered as the source to stimulate seismic waves. The seismic waves pass through the seawater into the formation, and the acquisition cables receive the reflected waves of different characteristics reflected back from each rock layer. According to the processing and analysis of the collected formation data, the location and reservoir conditions of the oil reservoir are basically mastered.

Drilling and mining stage: Next, the oil field development stage is entered, including drilling production wells, oil and gas production, concentration, processing, storage and transportation. Offshore oil and gas production equipment is required to be small in size, light in weight, efficient and reliable, highly automated, and compactly arranged. ‌

Processing and export stage: The separated crude oil is transported to the terminal processing plant on land through gathering pipelines or tankers, and gas-liquid separation and a series of deep treatments are carried out according to the different needs of downstream users. After meeting the requirements, it is transported to thousands of households, including power plants, gas for people's livelihood, and used as chemical raw materials. ‌

Deep-sea oil and gas development also involves specific equipment and technologies, such as floating drilling and production platforms, underwater wellheads/underwater production systems, and submarine pipelines. ‌Globally, there are two main models for deep-sea oil and gas development: ‌

US Gulf of Mexico model: Make full use of the submarine pipeline system in the US Gulf of Mexico to create convenient conditions for the access of platform export pipelines and the export of oil and gas, forming an oil and gas field development engineering model of "floating drilling and production platform-underwater wellhead/underwater production system-submarine pipeline network". ‌

Brazilian model: Based on the characteristics of its continental shelf, Petrobras has developed an oil and gas field development engineering model of "semi-submersible platform-underwater wellhead/underwater production system-floating production storage and offloading device/floating storage and offloading vessel (FPSO/FSO)" through technical research and production practice, referred to as the "Brazilian model". ‌

The application of these models and technologies enables deep-sea oil and gas development to be carried out efficiently under complex environmental conditions.