GS. 05.

50482 4 Confidential

Executive summary

This document focuses on the weather downtime in the offloading cycle of a generic LNG Floating
Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU). Results from these weather downtime assessments are essential
for site concept selection and design of FSRU's, and are also used as input for logistics simulating the
total gas supply chain.
The FSRU is an unproven concept as none yet exists and so far Shell has not designed one in detail.
Therefore, the analytical knowledge of and operational insight in operating limits with respect to the
FSRU side-by-side offloading cycle is not available. This leads to difficulties in determining downtime and
its most sensitive factors.

Objective
The objective of this project is therefore twofold:
To determine the most sensitive operating limit that causes weather downtime
To create a tool that can assess weather downtime of an FSRU
The study focused on a near shore import terminal that is weathervaning around a turret and is supplied
by LNG Carriers (LNGC's) with a capacity of approximately 135,000 m3 and offloading the LNG in a
side-by-side mooring configuration. The duration of this offloading cycle is 25 hours. These are general
characteristics and figures practical in today's industry.

Methodology
In order to achieve this goal, three building blocks were designed and implemented:
Operating limits of the typical operations in an offloading cycle of the FSRU
A downtime calculation tool
A model that calculates the heading direction of the FSRU
As an FSRU has never been built before, root criteria and operating limits could not be derived from
historical data, and thus had to be derived from other (concept) projects, literature, guidelines and
operational experience on comparable operations like lightering and conventional LNG operations.
The downtime model designed for this study has been based on the Downtime Assessment Tool of
DMC: this tool calculates downtime based upon the availability of suitable weather windows to perform
an offloading cycle. Fleet logistics or other causes of downtime are not included in the model. The
model considers a continuous time trace of hindcast environmental data.
An essential component of the downtime tool is the rotation model, which has been designed to
calculate the heading direction of the FSRU, resulting in the relative angles of incidence of the
environmental forces. This model takes into account the transverse forces and yaw moments based on
empirical approximation equations of forces on vessels and LNG Carriers, taken from the guidelines of
the Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF).

To find the most sensitive operating limit, each operating limit was varied by 20% for three locations
during downtime assessments performed with the FSRU downtime tool. These locations are:
Gulf of Mexico (US)
Hazira (India)
Long Island Sound (US)
These locations have also been compared to each other. Comparisons and conclusions with respect to
the most sensitive operating limit have been based on two characteristics of operability that emerged
from the tool:
GS.05.50482 5 Confidential

Theoretical average uptime, which is the number of calculated potentially available offloading
slots divided by the maximum number of theoretically offloading slots (350 sots for a 25h
offloading period). This gives an estimate of the theoretical annual throughput.
Waiting time distribution, which can be used to present an indication of the required storage
capacity by using the waiting time that has a probability of exceedence of 1%.

Results
The use of the newly developed FSRU downtime tool resulted in the following main conclusions:
Berthing is the most sensitive operating limit that influences the operability of a terminal. The
effect of the berthing operating limit was most significant for the Gulf of Mexico:
20% increased limit: Uptime: + 4.2 % Waiting time: largest decrease
20% decreased limit: Uptime: - 13.9% Waiting time: largest increase
For berthing there were two ways to deploy tugs: in push-pull mode (normal) or pulling on long
lines (optimized). For unberthing there was also a difference: the manoeuvrability of the LNGC
varied from normal to optimal. This resulted in two different operation limits, called normal and
optimized. The operating limits for optimized berthing had a positive effect on the waiting time
duration distributions of all locations, while this effect was negligible for optimized unberthing.
Optimized berthing also increased the uptime of Gulf of Mexico with 5.2 %, while this was
0.8% for optimized unberthing. However, the uptime for Hazira increased with 2.9% for
optimized unberthing, compared to 1.3% for optimized berthing. Effects for Long Island Sound
were negligible.
The tool applied to the three test locations resulted in the following values for theoretical uptime
and required storage capacity:
3
o Gulf of Mexico: Uptime: 81.8 % Required storage: 361,000 m
o Hazira: Uptime: 89.7 % Required storage: 888,000 m3
3
o Long Island Sound: Uptime: 97.5 % Required storage: 224,000 m
From these figures it can be concluded that the feasibility for the Long Island Sound locations is
best. For Gulf of Mexico the uptime is a potential showstopper, for Hazira it's the required
storage.

The accuracy of the results from this study depends on the accuracy of the three building blocks: the
FSRU rotation model, the input of the operating limits and the downtime tool. The importance of the
accuracy of the operating limits proved to be most significant.
An indicative value of these operating limits as used in the model, expressed in the significant wave
height (H s ), together with the root criteria of the operations, is shown in the table below.

Operation

Pilot boarding Safety of the pilot 1.5

Approach
Connecting the tugs Safety of the crew 3.0
Berthing and Berthing: tugs push-pull Excessive motions of the tugboats 1.5 0.5
Mooring Berthing: tugs pull on long lines Controllability of the LNGC 2.8 1.0
Moored
Excessive relative LNGC and Sea: 3.0 Sea: 1.5
condition and Being moored
FSRU motions Swell: 1.0 Swell: 0.5
offloading
LNGC and FSRU create sufficient
Unberthing Unberthing lateral distance 2.0
LNGC is controlled at all times