Offshore oil and gas facilities require reliable upstream logistics to provide them with the necessary goods and services for safe and successful operations. Previous research has identified adverse metocean conditions during offshore offloading operations as a main cause of logistics disruptions in the North Sea. In the Arctic, environmental conditions are considered harsher and operational experience is more limited. Understanding the influence of metocean conditions on offloading operability is an essential basis for understanding the vulnerability of the logistics system. The aim of this paper is to quantify the influence of metocean conditions on the operability of offshore offloading operations for each month of the year in the North- and Barents Seas. For this purpose, the critical subfunctions and metocean hazards in the offshore offloading process were identified and an operability gap analysis was performed using 15 years of hindcast metocean data. The results of this study show that metocean factors have a large influence on offshore offloading operability in the Barents Sea. Although overall operability windows are comparable between the North- and Barents Seas, regional variations exist and the factors causing inoperability in the Arctic are more complex as they involve icing, low temperatures, sea ice and more frequent periods of poor visibility. The presented assessment method can be extended when new information or more accurate data becomes available.
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