Mathematical models for scheduling pipe-laying vessels related to offshore oil and gas logistics

What is it about?

The Pipe-Laying Support Vessel (PLSV) is one of the most critical agents in offshore oil and gas operations in ultra-deep waters. These vessels are responsible for connecting pipelines between sub-sea oil wells and production platforms, thus allowing production to flow. The problem is similar to other scheduling problems in different industrial environments with tasks assigned and sequenced on available resources. However, more complex aspects are considered, such as the fleet's heterogeneity with different capacities, various pipeline sizes, multiple tasks executed in each well, different pipeline arrival dates at the port, and others. We developed mathematical optimization models to properly define the problem, using commercial solvers to produce solutions to it, providing a decision support tool for PLSV planners.

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Photo by Warner on Unsplash

Photo by Warner on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The most important aspect is the methodology's capacity to provide feasible and quality solutions for the problem in a reasonable computational time. In general, solutions developed without a decision support tool present violations related to the problem's restrictions, with capacity violations, non-compliance with pipeline arrival dates, and others. Computational experiments detail the advantages of different mathematical formulations for different problem sizes.

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