Planning the transport of loads to oil platforms considering the arrangement of the loads on the ship's deck

Oil exploration in Brazil is done mainly by offshore oil platforms located far from the coast and ships transport all supplies for them. This paper proposes a method based on a Hybrid Simulated Annealing with Ship's Balance (HSA-SB) metaheuristic to plan the transport of loads to offshore platforms considering the arrangement of the loads on the ship's deck and the ship's balance about its keel. The main objective of HSA-SB is to minimize the ships affreightment costs by reducing the number of ships used and the distance sailed. It also arranges the loads on the deck, aiming to reduce ship's imbalance. HSA-SB was tested on real instances from a major Brazilian oil company and the results showed possible financial benefits.