🇺🇸United States

Shipper dissatisfaction and lost business from unreliable pipeline and terminal schedules

3 verified sources

Definition

Industry scheduling solutions highlight improved visibility of injection start/end times and better shipper information about product movements as major benefits, indicating that baseline practices often leave shippers uncertain about timing.[1][4] This uncertainty translates into downstream inventory risk, demurrage, and lost sales for shippers, which in turn damages the pipeline/terminal operator’s customer relationships and renewal prospects.

Key Findings

  • Financial Impact: Loss of even a single medium‑sized shipper on a products pipeline can remove several million dollars per year in tariff revenue; if unreliable scheduling causes a few percent of shippers to divert volumes to competing modes or operators over time, the cumulative revenue loss for a large midstream system can reach the tens of millions of dollars over a multi‑year period.
  • Frequency: Weekly
  • Root Cause: Manual scheduling with limited real‑time visibility, lack of clear ETAs for batches, and poor integration between scheduling, SCADA, and customer portals leading to frequent schedule changes and limited advance notice to shippers.[1][3][4]

Why This Matters

This pain point represents a significant opportunity for B2B solutions targeting Oil and Coal Product Manufacturing.

Affected Stakeholders

Shipper services and customer service teams, Pipeline schedulers, Terminal managers, Commercial account managers

Deep Analysis (Premium)

Financial Impact

$1-3M annually in demurrage penalties + lost volume when paving contractor diverts to competitor terminal with more reliable slot windows • $1-3M annually in disputed tariff credits + lost retail gas station volume when chains choose competing operators with SaaS-documented delivery reliability (audit trail proves on-time performance) • $1-3M annually in lost marine fuel volume when suppliers switch to competing terminals with SaaS-enabled real-time slot reallocation and rapid confirmation (<30 min)

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Current Workarounds

Email confirmations sent in batches; retail chains must manually check email for updates; phone escalations when discrepancies found; manual matching of schedules to BOLs • Email confirmations, spreadsheet-based slot booking, manual phone calls to confirm actual start times, post-hoc billing reconciliation via email attachments • Email notification sent to contractor; contractor may be on site and misses email; phone call needed to confirm; manual rescheduling causes delays

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Methodology & Sources

Data collected via OSINT from regulatory filings, industry audits, and verified case studies.

Evidence Sources:

Related Business Risks

Sub‑optimal pipeline and terminal schedules causing lost throughput and revenue

If scheduling optimization improves operational and planning efficiency by 41% and profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 pipeline/terminal operator, even a conservative 5–10% under‑throughput on a 500,000 bbl/day network at $2/bbl margin equates to roughly $18–36M per year in lost contribution margin before optimization.

Excess pumping energy, drag‑reducing agent, and operating costs from inefficient schedules

Emerson reports that using PipelineOptimizer to reduce electric and DRA usage can "easily" save a pipeline operator substantial operating costs; on a 1,000‑mile liquids line, energy/DRA typically run into tens of millions of dollars annually, so a conservative 5–10% avoidable waste implies roughly $2–5M per year attributable to poor scheduling.[3][4]

Product contamination and interface reprocessing due to poor batch sequencing

Scheduling research for real‑world pipelines models interface contamination and reprocessing as a significant cost term; for a large refined‑products line, even 0.5–1% of shipped volume downgraded or re‑processed at $50/bbl value loss on 200,000 bbl/day implies roughly $18–36M per year of avoidable quality‑related costs if sequencing is not optimized.[4][6]

Delayed billing and revenue recognition from fragmented scheduling and accounting data

If scheduling integration improves profitability by 51% for a Fortune 500 operator and part of that is faster, more accurate billing and reduced disputes, a conservative estimate of 2–3 days reduction in average settlement on $1B of annual movements equates to financing and dispute‑related costs in the low single‑digit millions per year before optimization.

Idle pipeline and tank capacity from manual, non‑optimal scheduling

If operational efficiency increases by 41% after implementing optimized scheduling for a large pipeline/terminal network, even attributing only a fraction of that to added throughput suggests multi‑million‑dollar annual value; for a 300,000 bbl/day line, 3–5% avoidable idle capacity at $1.50/bbl tariff is roughly $5–8M per year in lost capacity monetization.

Regulatory non‑compliance exposure from inadequate scheduling visibility and reconciliation

Regulatory penalties for misreported volumes, tax irregularities, or imbalance violations can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident; recurring reconciliation deficiencies in a large midstream operator could plausibly expose them to multi‑million‑dollar risk over several years, though precise figures are case‑specific.

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