This month sees the launch of SHIPMOOR, an innovative new mooring analysis tool which has been designed to improve safety for the LNG industry, reducing the risk of disconnections between LNG terminals and carriers.
Developed as a result of a collaboration between HR Wallingford and Witherby Publishing Group, SHIPMOOR is an easy-to-use, internet-based application that facilitates mooring analysis, matching data on LNG vessels and terminals to support ship to shore compatibility assessments.
Primarily designed to make the assessment of mooring an LNG carrier alongside a berth a straightforward process, and reduce the likelihood of error with pre-entered ship and berth data, SHIPMOOR uses the combined power of cloud-based servers to undertake the static (Phase I) and dynamic mooring (Phase II, where required) analysis for each vessel.
SHIPMOOR provides reliable and accurate ship/shore mooring assessment, including 3D visualisation of the mooring arrangement with a 3D interactive tool for the development and examination of mooring plans.
Dr. Mark McBride, HR Wallingford’s Ships Group Manager, said: “SHIPMOOR can be used for all types of ships to validate their mooring arrangements against the conditions they will encounter at a specific berth. In the case of LNG carriers, the results can be validated against industry-specific environmental criteria.”
Technical Director of Witherby, Johan Machtelinckx, commented, “SHIPMOOR will make the mooring analysis of an LNG carrier alongside a berth a straightforward process. It is a 21st century solution for mooring analysis.”
By optimizing a process that is usually completed manually, SHIPMOOR helps to minimize errors and provides reliable data to port operators, vessel owners/charterers and cargo owners by maintaining up-to-date characteristics of individual ships and LNG terminals in a central database.
Iain Gunn, HR Wallingford’s Oil and Gas Sector Lead, explained why this is such a critical issue: “SHIPMOOR improves safety by mitigating the risk of mooring line failure, excessive vessel movement and emergency disconnection of the loading arms. It typically takes around 12 hours to re-establish these connections, with the associated demurrage. The potential damage to the environment, assets and reputation, however, are unquantifiable.”
SHIPMOOR will officially launch at Witherby and SIGTTO’s stand (A147) at Gastech Barcelona. All exhibition attendees are invited to view a demonstration of the portal or click here for more information.
To watch a short video, click here.
