China National Offshore Oil Corp, the country's largest offshore oil explorer, announced on Friday it has completed the construction of its 17th floating production, storage and offloading unit valued at 2.7 billion yuan ($440 million).

The FPSO will be used for the processing of hydrocarbons and storage of oil and become a key component of oil production in the South China Sea and the Bohai Sea, said the company.

The unit has a daily crude processing capacity of 56,000 barrels, which will raise the efficiency of China's offshore oil exploration and production. It will go into operation by the end of the month.