Offshore terminal

An offshore terminal loads or discharges tankers at a mooring away from a conventional quay, used where draft, environment, or cargo segregation rule out an inshore berth. The common forms are the single point mooring (SPM) and the closely related single buoy mooring (SBM) and CALM buoy, where a tanker weathervanes around a buoy connected to seabed pipelines by floating and submarine hoses. They serve crude export and import where building a deepwater jetty is impractical, and they demand careful hose and mooring management in a seaway.