Design and Planning of Downstream Petroleum Supply Chains

Petroleum Supply Chains' (PSC) managers are focusing on building flexible networks integrating multi-entity installations to mitigate against reduced margins, increased crude oil costs and lower product demands. This research proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model, for the downstream PSC, to develop an efficient network design with tactical planning decisions of production, storage, transportation, importation and exportation volumes of crude oil and derived products. The results provide better design stage decisions relating to location, sizing and operation of installations and links as well as tactical decisions for various stage time-dependent transportation volumes and inventory levels. Real world examples based on the PSC network in Portugal are used to test the model's response to different situations.