Pelican Pipeline

There are common drivers behind the handful of offshore crude oil terminals now under development along the Gulf Coast, chief among them the well-founded belief that shippers would prefer putting crude on Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), which can only be fully loaded in deep water. But each of these projects also has unique nuances — its own specific rationale and characteristics. Tallgrass Energy’s plan is a case in point in that it involves a new pipeline from the crude hub in Cushing, OK, to the refinery center in St. James, LA, and to a new onshore crude storage and loading terminal a few miles down the Mississippi River, to be followed by a VLCC-ready offshore terminal capable of both exporting and importing crude. Today, we continue our review of made-for-VLCCs offshore terminals with a look at Tallgrass’s effort to deliver neat, unblended barrels directly from multiple inland plays to deep water — “shale-to-ship,” in other words.