China National Offshore Oil Corp, the country's largest offshore oil producer, worked on the final stages of Asia's biggest deepwater central platform in the South China Sea on Thursday.

Due to bad weather, the final installation was delayed by several hours but its completion is imminent, the company said.

The project, the Liwan 3-1 Natural Gas Central Offshore Platform, to give it its full title, will have an annual processing capacity of 12 billion cubic meters and will be in operation by the end of the year, according to CNOOC.

"The processed natural gas will be mainly supplied to power plants in Guangdong province and for other industrial use," said Yang Zhuangchun, deputy director of the project with the South China Sea Deep Water Gas Development under CNOOC.

Liwan 3-1 is the largest natural gas offshore discovery.