EVALUATING PETROLEUM DEPOT OPERATIONS WITH SCENARIOS PLANNING AND ECONOMIC SIMULATION-OPTIMIZATION

Oil terminals are widely used to store various liquids and gases. The refinery scheduling problem is one of the most challenging problems in operational research due to the complexity of the refinery scheduling operations and the corresponding process models. In this paper, we present a model by which a decision maker should be able to choose the optimal number of tanks, tank size and truck arrival rate to maximize average total profit per week for an oil terminal operation. One of the refineries procedures is used to determine which combination of levels. Of number of tanks, tank size and truck arrival rate will result in highest average total profit per week. We started the estimation process, for 180 weeks with 20 weeks of warmup period with ten replications were conducted for four different scenarios and the total profit week ($) for each run was compiled in spread tables. Given an oil flow rate into the Terminal, tank and truck fill rate and a cost and revenue structure, the model is able to predict with 99% confidence a set of factor levels that yields the highest average total profit per week