Green scheduling is an important means to achieve sustainable industrial development and enhance the green efficiency of enterprises. Given the characteristics of a modern crude oil supply system, the shuttle tanker fleet green scheduling problem (FGSP) is discussed considering a carbon tax and variable tanker speed factor. To minimize the green operating cost (i.e., sum of general operating cost and carbon tax) of the tanker fleet, an integer programming model for shuttle tanker fleet green scheduling (FGSM) is established. The FGSM optimizes the number and sizes of tankers, the number and positions of floating production storage and offloading units (FPSO) at which to berth and the scheduling plan (i.e., berthing order and sailing speed) of each tanker in the fleet. Based on the column generation algorithm, a shuttle tanker fleet green scheduling algorithm is designed to solve the above model accurately. The experimental results show that considering the speed factor, the green operating cost of an example fleet decreases. For different carbon tax rates, speed optimization is an effective way to reduce the green operating cost of the fleet. The above results also show that the FGSM and algorithm can effectively solve the FGSP, improve the operation level and efficiency, and reduce the green operating cost of oil companies.

Introduction

The process of oil and gas extraction not only supplies energy products but also causes very large amounts of energy consumption and CO2 emissions (Sun et al., 2018). Especially for large offshore oil fields, oil companies (decision makers) often need to use large tankers to collect oil from various oil platforms, resulting in a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Oil tankers accounted for approximately 13% of the nearly 1 billion tons of CO2 emitted in 2015 (Olmer et al., 2017). At present, ships have become one of the largest sources of pollution with their high power (Deniz et al., 2010). Additionally, in response to global warming, governments around the world have introduced carbon emission control measures for vehicles in recent years (see Oreskes (2011), Zhang and Baranzini (2004), Jian et al. (2017) and Deng et al. (2015)). A carbon emission control system for greenhouse gas emissions is gradually being established with a carbon tax as the core. Motivated by this context, for decision makers, controlling the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation processes is not only related to morality and responsibility but also affects the green operating cost (i.e., the sum of the general operating cost and carbon emissions cost). Determining how to effectively control greenhouse gas emissions and improve the energy use efficiency of offshore oil production has gradually become a significant issue to academics and industry.