The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), the only terminal in the U.S. capable of fully loading a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), continued to experience a decline in its share of the crude oil export market in the first quarter of 2025. In Q1, LOOP recorded export loadings of only 65 Mb/d, marking its lowest quarterly volumes since the terminal began exporting in 2018. Between January and April 2023, crude oil exports from Louisiana averaged nearly 450 Mb/d, with LOOP serving as the primary load terminal. Export volumes for that same period in 2024 averaged 330 Mb/d, and declined to less than 95 Mb/d in 2025 — a 72% decrease year-over-year. Export activity at LOOP has remained subdued this week with no loadings, as detailed in our Crude Voyager report. The latest data shows Louisiana’s 4-week average export volume hovering around just 50 Mb/d, as indicated at the far right of the green line in the chart below.
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- Analyst Insight
LOOP Loads Zero Crude Vessels for Export in June
Zero export volumes were recorded out of LOOP the entire month of June.
- Blog
Leaders of the Pack - Three Gulf Coast Crude Oil Export Terminals Winning Battle for Barrels
Week by week, more than 20 terminals along the U.S. Gulf Coast export crude oil, but nearly half of the total export volumes are being loaded at just three facilities: the Moda Midstream terminal near Corpus Christi, the Enterprise Hydrocarbon Terminal in Houston, and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) off the Louisiana coast. What gives these “Big 3” their edge? Location? Pipeline connectivity? Storage capacity? Loading rate? The answer, of course, is “all of the above.” There is more to the story, though, and other terminals are angling to become bigger players, presumably at the expense of the Big 3 themselves. Today, we begin a series on Texas and Louisiana’s largest oil export facilities, what they offer, how they’ve fared, and what they’re planning next.
- Blog
Can't You See - Big Changes Happening Below the Surface in U.S. Crude Export Markets
Massive shifts are occurring in the U.S. crude oil export market, but you wouldn’t know it from the steady-as-she-goes pace of activity. The volumes being loaded along the Gulf Coast have stayed within a relatively tight range — 2.5 MMb/d to 3.2 MMb/d — for 12 consecutive quarters now, and the export pace for each of the past three quarters has remained within a few thousand barrels of 3 MMb/d. So, what’s changed? For one thing, Corpus Christi is now by far the dominant point of export, with Houston, Louisiana, and Beaumont/Nederland trailing. Another is that Europe, heavily impacted by the sharp decline in imports from Russia, is now the leading destination for U.S. barrels. There are other changes, too, including increased use of Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) and terminal expansion projects. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from our recently published Crude Voyager Quarterly Report.
