Emission reduction through resource sharing in offshore logistics: a case from the North Sea

On the Norwegian continental shelf, multiple oil and gas companies operate a large number of offshore installations used for the extraction of oil and gas resources. The cargo distribution takes place with specialized platform supply vessels (PSVs) from designated onshore supply bases located along the coast, and each oil and gas company operates its own fleet of PSVs used to fulfill demands at its installations. The PSVs are costly, and operating them yields large emissions. In order to contribute to reduced emissions and costs from the offshore logistics, we consider a supply vessel planning problem with resource sharing, where the oil and gas companies share supply bases and PSV fleets in order to increase the efficiency of the fleet, with fewer vessels needed and higher utilization of cargo capacity on each route. We present a binary programming model and carry out a case study based on real data from four different operators (and two supply bases) servicing 39 installations in the North Sea. The potential for reducing emissions from the logistics operations is investigated for various resource‐sharing configurations. Our results show that, on average, sharing resources in this specific part of the Norwegian continental shelf can reduce emissions by approximately 16%. Furthermore, we find that the overall contracted fleet of PSVs can be reduced by up to five vessels from an initial fleet of 19 vessels, yielding great cost savings.