“Determining operational policies for oil flow and tanker loading through simulation”

In this paper the use of simulation in addressing the specific needs of one oil company's tanker scheduling problem is examined. The situation is actually more involved than simply tanker scheduling. The flow of oil from the wells to the storage facility must also be considered. This flow is constrained by governmental regulations and profit considerations. A network-discrete event-continuous simulation model, written in SLAM, was developed to address certain issues of interest to the oil company. These were issues such as a desirable mean time between tanker arrivals and the adequacy of the current storage facility. The latter was also of interest to the government involved, since there were usually tankers waiting to be loaded. The results show that tanker arrival schedule can be developed and that the current storage facility is adequate to meet this company's needs.