StatoilHydro routed Europe's gas grid as one optimization problem

Norway's offshore gas system was too interconnected for spreadsheet planning: gas quality, field output, processing plants, pressure and customer commitments all changed what any single pipe could carry. SINTEF's GassOpt made the network itself the unit of decision.

The published SINTEF abstract says the network had 7,800 km of subsea pipelines, represented about 15% of European gas consumption, and had capacity of 120 bcm a year. GassOpt used a mixed-integer program so StatoilHydro and Gassco could test configurations and routings quickly.

The result was not just cleaner daily dispatch. SINTEF says the tool supported current operations, extensions and security of supply; the paper abstract reports StatoilHydro estimated about US$2 billion in accumulated savings from 1995 to 2008.

Route the whole network, not each pipe

It treated system effects as the core problem rather than noise around each asset.

The model translated gas-quality and capacity constraints into decisions planners could test.

A graphical tool made optimization usable by transport planners, not only researchers.

The same model supported both daily routing and long-term network-extension choices.

When assets are tightly coupled, local utilization is the wrong target. Model the shared constraint system and the hidden capacity appears.

GassOpt became part of transportation planning and security-of-supply work at StatoilHydro and Gassco. SINTEF says several later OR projects grew out of the cooperation, and the project reached the 2008 Franz Edelman finals.