ABSTRACT
Hydrocarbons remain the most important fuel in today’s world despite recent depreciation in their economic value and continuous developments in the use of alternative sources of energy such as solar power. The Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) predicts a bounce back in the value of hydrocarbons in coming years which implies that there will be more exploration, offshore drilling and production of hydrocarbons worldwide. Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels have been widely used for these operations due to their cost effectiveness especially in remote areas. The oil produced from an FPSO can be transported to the mainland by the use of tankers and the offloading process from FPSO to tanker can be affected by weather conditions. Hence, a rigorous downtime analysis for the offloading operation has to be conducted to ensure crew safety and to maximize production. A simplified method for analysing the weather downtime on a turret moored FPSO and the tandem offloading process is presented in this paper and the workability for both vessels is presented.
