A geostationary FPSO does not weathervane like a turret-moored ship-shaped FPSO. The offshore industry has limited experience for direct offloading from such geostationary installations in the North Sea. In recent years direct offloading operations from geostationary FPSOs by DP shuttle tankers, have been developed, and key operational principles for such a system are presented in this paper. Probabilistic modeling of the collision risk between shuttle tanker and geostationary FPSO in direct offloading is presented, followed by a case study. It is found that the collision risk level is much lower in the direct offloading than in the tandem offloading. The results demonstrate that the direct offloading approach is a promising concept with inherent safety designed in the operations, i.e. the positioning philosophy of the shuttle tanker and a large separation distance.
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