Wison Engineering Wins First Contract for Design of Oil Storage Facility on Floating Island in China

(Shanghai, January 21, 2013) Wison Engineering Services Co. Ltd. (HKEx: 02236) (“Wison Engineering” or the “Company”), China’s largest private chemical EPC contractor, announced that its indirect non-wholly owned subsidiary Wison Engineering Ltd. has recently entered into an onshore facilities design contract for the Huangzeshan Island Oil Transit, Storage & Transportation Project (the “Project”)  with Guangsha (Zhoushan) Energy Group Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Guangsha Group, China’s largest private construction enterprise. In this project, Wison Engineering will be responsible for the first phase of its onshore facilities’ design, including 1 million cubic meter crude oil storage tanks, 0.51 million cubic meter refined oil storage tanks and the relevant ancillary facilities of the storage area.

Located in the northern sea area of Zhoushan Port in Ningbo, the Project is China’s first oil storage facility to be located on a floating island and the first crude oil (fuel oil) transit, storage & transportation project to be funded and built by private enterprises. Upon its completion, it is expected to meet the projected transport volume demand of 35.6 million tons in 2020.

Huangzeshan Island, where the project is located, is an “L” shaped island with a top elevation that exceeds 90 meters above sea level. Part of its terrestrial area was created by land reclamation. The limited land area features complex terrain that poses challenges for firefighting and environmental protection, thus increase the complexity and difficulty of the Project design, given that there are no industrial precedents for reference. Through careful foresight, Wison Engineering has balanced the short-term and long-term demands of the project. According to its design, the final storage volume will exceed 10 million cubic meters, maximizing the island’s limited land resources. In addition, Wison Engineering’s innovative design concept features the deployment of 12 storage tanks, each with a capacity of 0.1 million cubic meters, sunken into the leveled hills and using the batholiths left by the leveled hills for the construction of a fire dike, integrating a road and a dike. Through this design, oil cannot leak into the ocean and cause pollution in the case of an accident, thereby guaranteeing the safety of the oil tanks. To address the challenge of firefighting on an isolated island, a man-made river-style emergency pool with a water-holding capacity of 17,000 cubic meters will be built on south side of the island. The comprehensive man-made water system will be used for rainwater collection, to supplement water supplies for firefighting and for environment beautification. These innovative designs, which will improve the safety and economic and operational efficiency of the entire base, are groundbreaking developments in China.  

The project is already underway, and the design is expected to be completed by May 2013.