Sandwell's Marine Transportation model allows oil and gas companies to evaluate alternative shipping systems, ports, routes and destinations. The model can simulate ocean shipping operations in great detail, including fleet parameters, storage requirements, ice conditions, and multiple ports.
Arctic transportation
To investigate the feasibility of transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Alaska to Asia, Exxon, BP and ARCO required a program incorporating the complex navigational rules that would govern LNG ships traveling to Valdez through Prince William Sound.
These rules include one-way traffic through the narrows, speed limits for various types of ships, exclusions zones for loaded LNG carriers, and speed reductions for conditions such as fog, wind, waves and icebergs.
Our model incorporated all these factors and also allowed for the numerous cruise ships using the Port of Valdez, and the large number of oil tankers (up to 500 per year) loading at the Alyeska terminal. The program included a feature permitting the user to assign different priorities to the different types of traffic.
Shipping LNG from Yemen
Exxon wanted to evaluate options for shipping LNG out of Yemen to selected destinations in Turkey and India. We configured the Marine Transportation Model to include LNG plant downtime, port closures due to weather, ship drydock schedules and cargo boil-off.
The route to Turkey required the tankers to transit the Suez Canal, which opens and closes at specific times for traffic in each direction. Incorporating these rules into the model enabled Exxon to measure their effect on turnaround time.
