Thunder Horse

Very Large Crude Carriers offer economies of scale and are the oil transporters of choice for shippers moving massive volumes of crude from the U.S. Gulf Coast to distant customers in Europe and Asia. VLCCs also can serve as cost-effective floating storage — in the current contango market, a growing number of these 2-MMbbl behemoths are being used to stockpile crude until its value increases in the coming months. VLCCs can be loaded to the gills through reverse lightering at a number of deepwater points off the coast of Texas, but only one facility, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, can fill the supertankers to the brim at the port itself. LOOP also can receive fully loaded VLCCs, of course, and another ace up its sleeve is its 72 MMbbl of cavern and tank storage a few miles inland at Clovelly, LA. Today, we continue our series on Gulf Coast export facilities with a look at LOOP.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is the nation’s largest waterborne crude oil import terminal. Capable of handling 1.2 MMb/d of crude throughput and with associated storage topping 67 MMBbl, LOOP is connected by pipeline to 50% of the nation’s refineries. As shale crude and increasing Canadian imports rush toward the Gulf Coast pushing out waterborne imports, the terminal needs to redefine its future.  Today in the first of two blogs on LOOP we look at how the port operates today.