Gary R. Kocis

Feedstock Routing in the ExxonMobil Downstream Sector

ExxonMobil annually transports significant volumes of vacuum gas oil (VGO) from supply points in Europe to refineries in the United States. Optimizing these transportation costs by using modern mathematical programming technology can provide significant cost savings. We developed a mixed-integer programming formulation for VGO routing and inventory management, and we integrated it into a decision support tool to enable experienced traders and schedulers to further improve the performance of ExxonMobils downstream supply chain.

Maritime crude oil transportation – A split pickup and split delivery problem

The maritime oil tanker routing and scheduling problem is known to the literature since before 1950. In the presented problem, oil tankers transport crude oil from supply points to demand locations around the globe. The objective is to find ship routes, load sizes, as well as port arrival and departure times, in a way that minimizes transportation costs. We introduce a path flow model where paths are ship routes. Continuous variables distribute the cargo between the different routes. Multiple products are transported by a heterogeneous fleet of tankers. Pickup and delivery requirements are not paired to cargos beforehand and arbitrary split of amounts is allowed. Small realistic test instances can be solved with route pre-generation for this model. The results indicate possible simplifications and stimulate further research.

Crude Oil Tanker Routing and Scheduling

Abstract This paper illustrates how operations research can be applied to large-scale maritime crude oil transportation. The more the industry strives to improve the efficiency of their supply chains the more complex and involved planning tasks become. Crude oil tanker routing and scheduling is a good example for a highly complex planning problem in the petroleum and shipping industry. It is also a prevalent problem for which research can provide solutions that exploit the existing potential for improvement. We describe the maritime transportation part of the crude oil supply chain which we denote as the crude oil tanker routing and scheduling problem (COTRASP). Throughout this article, mathematical notation is used as a method to illustrate the various aspects of the problem. Cited literature shows the efforts made to guarantee efficient transportation and realize cost savings in related problems. Finally, solution approaches are discussed and suggestions for further research are made.