ABS has launched the ‘Shuttle Tanker Advisory’ report, explaining what shuttle tankers are, where they operate, scoping out the challenges that they could face in different regions, their design features, and focusing on safety and human factors.
Shuttle tankers are primarily employed in offshore oil and gas fields. Typically, the offshore facility from which a shuttle tanker loads from is a Single Point Mooring (SPM) buoy or a Floating (Production) Storage and Offloading (F(P)SO) unit.
A shuttle tanker must be able to safely moor and load cargo from these types of units. This means that station keeping, cargo handling and communication between the shuttle tanker and offshore loading facility are crucial to the safe operation of a shuttle tanker.
Given that many shuttle tankers operate in the North Sea, the Canadian east coast (offshore Newfoundland) and the Russian (Varandey, Caspian, Sakhalin and Yamal) coast there are specific considerations related to operating in cold climates that need to be considered.
Therefore, ABS offers Notations for Operation in Low Temperature Environments and for Ice Load Monitoring. They also offer a full suite of Ice Class Notations including Polar Class, Enhanced Polar Class, First-year Ice Class and Baltic Ice Class.
Security of life starts with improving the safety and well-being of personnel with a clear understanding of their capabilities and limitations. That is why ABS offers Habitability, Ergonomic, Navigation Bridge Layout and Means of Access Notations to keep crew safe and working efficiently.
ABS also offers machinery related Notations for shuttle tankers, providing requirements for temperature monitoring and alarm, oil seal design, bearing wear down measurement, management of monitored data and surveys.
Click to read the 46 page pdf report at: ABS-Shuttle-Tanker-advisory-2019