An Offshore Petroleum Discharge System (Opds) Application Of Commercial Technology To Military Operational Requirements (1988)

ABSTRACT This paper describes the operational requirements, equipment design and application for an OFFSHORE PETROLEUM DISCHARGE SYSTEM (OPDS) capable of mooring tankers to 70,000 DWT four miles offshore in water depths to 200 feet and delivering 1.2 million gallons of fuel to the beach each day. Deployment of the system and start of pumping operations can be accomplished in minimal time with minimal support equipment. INTRODUCTION The operational requirement to provide supplies to forces ashore from ships offshore is not new. It has existed as long as there have been amphibious operations. Of special interest to this paper is the provision, over the beach, of large amounts of petroleum products required by today's " fighting machines". This problem was faced by the Allied Forces in World War II during the Normandy Invasion. Their answer was to develop a petroleum delivery system called Pipeline Under the Ocean, known as PLUTO. PLUTO consisted of up to twenty, 3 inch pipelines laid on the ocean floor from Great Britain to France. It delivered over 120 million gallons of fuel to the forces in Europe during the ten months following the invasion. The maximum daily delivery rate achieved was one million gallons. Today the requirement is much larger. One million gallons a day is now required for a force one tenth the size of that supported by PLUTO. Fuel consumption rates have skyrocketed with the use of helicopters, jets and vehicles wi th high performance engines. The modernization from the M-60 to the M-l tank alone increased fuel requirements 73 percentper tank. In addition, today's system cannot be site specific, but must be installable nearly anywhere in the world. THE OPDS SYSTEM OVERVIEW A Government-owned tanker with the OPDS installed on-board travels over open ocean to the Amphibious Operations Area. With the support of four Side Loadable Warping Tug's (SLWT's) the tanker temporarily sets a four point moor, deploys up to four miles of conduit and commences delivery of fuel to the beach within two days of arrival in the Area. The Single Anchor Leg Mooring (SALM) is then unloaded, deployed and the conduit connected to it. SALM deployment has been accomplished in less than five hours in actual field demonstrations. Tankers are moored directly to the SALM and product is discharged through the hose string and product piping. (Figure 1). All equipment (SALM and conduit) is retrievable by the SLWT's following use and reutilized at other locations. Existing commercial technology was applied to fill a Military requirement by utilizing a gravity base SALM. It can either be towed by or carried on board the tanker to the Operations Area and rapidly deployed to provide a mooring and fuel delivery system. Flexible conduit is carried on board the tanker in eight one-half mile lengths on storage reels. The conduit is an application of commercial hydraulic and marine hose technology and is the "pipeline" from the SALM to the beach. The tanker is manned by Merchant Marine personnel while the SLWT, diving and shore based support is provided by Military personnel.