Optimal offshore supply vessel planning: a case study of a Chinese offshore oil and gas production area

Abstract

In the offshore oil and gas industry, the drilling or production installations scattered in the offshore oilfields require supplies from onshore depots. These supply services are performed specially by the offshore supply vessel fleets shuttling between offshore installations and onshore depots. In practice, the offshore supply vessels owned by a service company are normally under time charter and their operations are arranged by their charterer, the oil company. The planning of the supply service under many real-life constraints is a problem faced by every offshore oil company. Considering the time charter and the fuel costs being so costly, a cost-efficient supply service planning can achieve considerable cost-saving for the operators. So, how to optimize the composition, supply route, and voyage schedule of the fleets, to minimize their operational cost, is an important and worthwhile problem. Fortunately, there are already some successful solutions for this optimization problem. Many logistics and maritime transportation methods can be introduced to realize the optimal and robust solution. In this thesis, the main objective is to discuss these methods, apply one of these methods, combined with the case of the offshore supply vessel fleet of COSL, to try to find out an optimal cost-efficient supply service planning for a specific offshore oil and gas production area.