Case study - Energy Optimization using Parallel Mixed Integer Programming at Veba Oel

Problem
In the Oil & Natural Gas industry it is very profitable to optimize the flow of raw materials and finished goods into and out of refineries. In large energy companies, this type of transportation modeling and optimization problem can become very large and extremely complex.

Solution
Veba Oel, a large oil & gas exploration and production company based in Germany, solved this problem using Haverly's GRTMPS forward planning system which was enhanced with Dash Optimization's Xpress-MP Parallel MIP solver. This modification has enabled Veba Oel to drastically reduce the optimization computation time for their model.

Model Specifics and Benefits
The transportation model that Veba Oel optimizes is the flow of materials through their refineries into the distribution network. This includes the flow of raw materials from the market into the refineries, and then back into the market as finished goods. Also factored into this model are raw materials and finished goods prices, along with the impact of different refinery processes and the changes in the stream properties as they occur.

Veba Oel's biggest transportation model is a matrix that has 16,000 rows, 28,000 columns, 140,000 non-zero elements with 1,300 integer variables. Previously the problem took over 12 hours to solve. In order to cut down this run-time, Veba Oel uses 'hooks' within the GRTMPS software to call the Xpress-MP MIP Parallel Solver. The Parallel Solver distributes the optimization process onto multiple processors, attaining a run-time of 1 hour 16 minutes with an accuracy of 0.01%.

Hardware and Software specifics
Veba Oel uses the GRTMPS system based on Dash Optimization's Parallel Xpress-MP version 12.15. This runs on a PC with 2GB memory and two 540 MHz-processors.

About Veba Oel
Veba Oel has refining and marketing operations across Europe, along with exploration and production sites in 13 different countries, primarily in the North Sea and Latin America. Currently, Veba Oel has reserves of over 600 million barrels of oil and 314 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

About Haverly
Haverly Systems, Inc., has offices in New Jersey, California, Texas, and England. Haverly has provided process industries with decision support systems since 1962. In June of 2001, Haverly finished out its 39th Consecutive Profitable Year.