A hub-location periodic vehicle routing problem in offshore oil and gas logistics

A. M. P. Santos and C. Guedes Soares ()
Additional contact information
A. M. P. Santos: Universidade de Lisboa
C. Guedes Soares: Universidade de Lisboa

Maritime Economics & Logistics, 2024, vol. 26, issue 4, No 7, 685-709

Abstract: Abstract This paper attempts to identify the optimal location of an intermediate offshore hub, where cargo could be transported from an onshore depot and subsequently distributed among neighboring offshore oil and gas production platforms. Such a hub would offer economies of scale, deriving from bigger offshore supply vessels, thereby decreasing overall logistics costs. Given the difficulty in obtaining an exact solution for the underlying hub-location periodic vehicle routing problem, an efficient genetic search-based procedure is used instead for the solution method. For the first time, both a mathematical formulation and a solution method are proposed, obtaining solutions for problem instances of the size faced in practice. An example application is presented for Santos Basin, in Brazil, where offshore installations are located at more than 100 nautical miles from shore. Additionally, the impact of uncertain demand and weather conditions on the hub-location decision is also investigated through the use of a two-phased optimization-simulation method. While a hub solution has been considered by the offshore oil and gas industry, to contain operating costs, results suggest that a hub solution is unlikely to provide any cost savings, vis à vis servicing the platforms directly from the shore depot.

Keywords: Hub-location and routing; Supply vessel planning problem; Offshore logistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41278-022-00244-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:marecl:v:26:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1057_s41278-022-00244-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41278/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41278-022-00244-8

Access Statistics for this article

Maritime Economics & Logistics is currently edited by Hercules E. Haralambides

More articles in Maritime Economics & Logistics from Palgrave Macmillan, International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().