The technological leadership of European and American enterprises is closely related to their long-term offshore oil and gas development practice. On this basis, European and American enterprises have formed a large number of technical patents and technical reserves, and accumulated rich engineering practice experience, which has become an important support for their research and development of new technologies and equipment. European and American enterprises are still the general contractors of most offshore oil and gas development projects in the world, and occupy a leading position in the design of offshore oil and gas field development scheme, equipment design and oil and gas field engineering construction. In order to reduce the development risk, they will choose European and American enterprises with technological advantages to be responsible for equipment design. This objectively enhanced its leading position in technology. Asian countries dominate the field of offshore engineering equipment manufacturing. In Asia, South Korea, Singapore, China and the United Arab Emirates are major manufacturers of offshore engineering equipment. South Korea monopolized the drilling ship market. By the end of 2009, Zhenhua Heavy Industry, CIMC, Samsung Heavy Industry, Daewoo Shipbuilding, Hyundai Heavy Industry and STX Shipbuilding had 33 hand-held drilling vessels, accounting for 94% of the market. South Korea and Singapore occupy the market of FPSO modification and new construction, with market share as high as 67% and 82% respectively. In the field of jack-up drilling platforms and semi-submersible drilling platforms, Singapore, China and United Arab Emirates occupy a dominant position. By the end of 2009, China, Singapore and UAE had 54 jack-up drilling platforms, accounting for 77% of the market. Semi-submersible drilling platforms hold 39 orders, accounting for 85% of the market.
Although Asia occupies a dominant position in equipment manufacturing, it lags far behind Europe and America in equipment design, especially China. Since 2000, more than 40 drilling platforms have been built or under construction in China, of which more than 70% are designed by European and American companies. Among them, jack-up platform design companies mainly include American F&; G company, GustoMSC company of the Netherlands; The design companies of semi-submersible drilling platforms mainly include American F&G Company, Norwegian GM Company, SEVAN Company and Italian Saipem Company. Enterprises in resource-rich countries began to enter the construction field. Relying on the huge demand of domestic offshore oil and gas resources development, Brazil, Russia and other resource-rich countries began to cultivate their own offshore engineering equipment construction enterprises and become new global competitors. Brazil proposed that the equipment for oil and gas exploration and development in its own sea areas should be built by domestic enterprises, and several domestic shipyards should speed up capacity building. Russia has realized the modernization of its shipbuilding industry through a series of orders from its own energy companies, and invited local and Korean shipbuilding enterprises to participate in the construction and transformation of its own shipyards with orders as bait.