Routing of supply vessels to petroleum installations

Purpose – In the Norwegian oil and gas industry the upstream logistics includes providing the offshore installations with needed supplies and return flow of used materials and equipment. This paper considers a real-life routing problem for supply vessels serving offshore installations at Haltenbanken off the northwest coast of Norway from its onshore supply base. The purpose of the paper is to explore how the offshore installation's limited storage capacity affects the routing of the supply vessels aiming towards creating efficient routes. Design/methodology/approach – A simplified version of the real-life routing problem for one supply vessel is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model that contains constraints reflecting the storage requirements problem. These constraints ensure that there is enough capacity at the platform decks and that it is possible to perform both pickup and delivery services.