The cost of weather in a floating oil production system
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The cost of weather in a ¯oating oil production system J Bowers* University of Stirling, Stirling, UK New oil ®elds are being developed in deeper water where conventional production systems are impractical. One alternative is the ¯oating production, storage and of¯oading system: oil is extracted and stored on a moored, ¯oating tanker while a shuttle tanker transports the oil between the ®eld and the re®nery port. However, when the weather is too rough, mooring and of¯oading has to be suspended. If there is inadequate storage capacity, oil production also stops, resulting in a costly interruption to the revenue ¯ow. Simulation experiments with different design con®gurations can identify the economic optimum that minimises the ®nancial impact of the weather on the operation. However, not all of the uncertainties can be captured completely in a quantitative manner and sensitivity analyses suggest that a more robust con®guration is a better option than the simple optimum. Keywords: simulation; oil production; sea transport
Introduction As offshore oil production has moved into ®elds where the oceanography and economics are more hostile, new technologies have been developed. The ¯oating production, storage and of¯oading (FPSO) system is now a popular alternative to the ®xed platform.1 Oil is extracted from a number of subsea wells and delivered via ¯exible risers to a ¯oating vessel which is moored securely to the sea bed. The oil is separated from the accompanying water and gas and stored in the ¯oating vessel until it is transferred to a shuttle tanker and transported to the re®nery's port, as illustrated in Figure 1. Although the ®rst FPSO systems began operation in 1977 it is only recently that they have become popular. The relative mobility of the FPSO system is attractive in various situations where nature or politics represents a signi®cant risk. In the oil®elds offshore China, typhoons regularly sweep the area and FPSO systems have been designed which can be rapidly moved to safety. FPSO systems have been employed in the North Sea to exploit small ®elds which might not be ®nancially viable using the more traditional ®xed platform technologies. There is no need to extend the oil pipeline infrastructure and, if the life of the ®eld is short, the FPSO vessel may be moved onto another ®eld, thus increasing the utilisation of the capital investment. FPSO systems also appear to be the best approach to exploiting the oil ®elds of the Atlantic Margin where the deep waters and the lack of any existing *Correspondence: J Bowers, Department of Management and Organization, The Faculty of Management, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
infrastructure would make the use of ®xed platforms and oil pipelines uneconomic. By 1997 55 FPSO vessels were in operation and another 82 were under development worldwide2 and the popularity of the system is expected to increase further. Determining the
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