Proceedings of the Sixteenth (2006) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference
San Francisco, California, USA, May 28-June 2, 2006
Copyright © 2006 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers
ISBN 1-880653-66-4 (Set); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set)
Responses of a LNG Receiving Terminal to Hurricane in Shallow Water
Yonghui (Allen) Liu and L. Terry Boatman
FMC Technologies
Houston, TX, USA
ABSTRACT
Recently, a LNG receiving facility utilizing weathervaning column
stabilized platform has been proposed for LNG offloading in the Gulf
of Mexico, USA. The platform will be secured at site with a tower yoke
mooring system in shallow water. This paper will present a
methodology to evaluate the survivability of the platform in 100-year
hurricanes. Higher-order boundary element method (HOBEM) has been
utilized to generate the first- and second-order wave forces on the
platform and its motions were predicted by a frequency-domain
method. It was found that the optimized motions can be achieved for
the weathervaning column stabilized platform with twelve-columns that
utilize a rectangular cross-sections, instead of the conventional circular
cross-section columns.
KEY WORDS: LNG receiving terminal; LNG; shallow water;
HOBEM; tower yoke mooring; column stabilized platform.
INTRODUCTION
Clean-burning liquefied natural gas (LNG) can help meet growing
energy demand in North America for natural gas. This will lead to
significant increase of imported LNG worldwide. However, the
regulatory, safety and environment concerns make it desirable to locate
the LNG receiving terminals offshore, particularly in North America. In
general, those facilities will be located as close to the shore as possible
in order to reduce the cost of the necessary pipelines. Therefore, they
will likely be located in very shallow water just sufficient for the
navigation of the LNG carriers.
Recently, a LNG receiving facility utilizing Bishop Processing™ and
weathervaning column stabilized platform has been proposed by Davis,
Boatman and Liu (2004) for LNG offloading in the Gulf of Mexico,
USA. The Bishop Process™ is a novel method of unloading and re-
gasifying liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly from ocean tankers for
storage in underground salt caverns. Initial indications are that a salt
cavern-based LNG terminal (see Baan et al (2003)) can be built at about
half the cost and twice the storage capacity of a conventional cryogenic
liquid tank terminal.
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The entire heat exchange and vaporization processes, using either water
or ambient air to vaporize the LNG, with power generation, pumps,
controls, and all support facilities can be installed on a floating and
weathervaning terminal with minimum storage requirement. The
structural arrangement of the hull is referred to as a column stabilized
structure, a concept well known for its utilization for semi-submersible
drilling vessels, production platforms, and heavy lift offshore crane
vessels where maximum resistance to motion is desired. This structure
is characterized by a rectangular deck frame supported by multiple
buoyant columns attached to two submerged pontoons. The relatively
small and widely spaced water plane areas of the columns provide
exceptional stability in heavy wind, wave and water currents.
Compared to a conventional ship shape hull or barge shaped vessels,
the column stabilized platform has much longer natural periods of roll
and heave and therefore its response to wind driven waves and swell is
much lower. The reduced motion characteristics of a column-stabilized
floating platform offer increased availability for offloading when
compared to a ship-hull type floating structure. Additional operational
safety is gained with a novel platform concept for mooring the carrier
to the platform. The open frame structure is ideal for air vaporization
such as Mustang LNG Smart™ vaporization process because of
unhindered downward air circulation through the frame. The open flat
deck provides for an optimal layout of process equipment and living
quarters achieve minimum safety risk.
Since the LNG terminal will be installed most likely in very shallow
water, a tower-yoke mooring system, consisting of a tower fixed at the
seabed and a mooring yoke assembly connecting the platform with the
tower, is proposed to secure the facility at site. The LNG will be
transferred from a side-by-side moored LNG carrier to the terminal
with LNG loading arms and re-gasified on the platform. The mooring
yoke assembly attaches the platform to the turntable on the tower and
allows the yoke and platform to weathervane around the tower while
allowing transfer of the gas to the pipeline grids.
This paper will present a methodology to evaluate the survivability of
the platform in 100-year hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. The
HOBEM software (higher-order boundary element method) developed
by Liu (1988) has been utilized to generate the first- and second-order
wave forces on the platform and the motions were predicted by a
frequency-domain method. This method and procedure have been
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