LOOP facilities healthy, general manager says

The most-recognized part of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Platform (LOOP) is the platform standing alone in the Gulf of Mexico in 110 feet of water 18 miles south of Grand Isle receiving crude oil from tankers so big they may be the largest moving objects on earth – too large to unload at inshore ports.

When the terminal out in the Gulf was constructed in the early 1980s, it was the first offshore oil terminal in the nation. The terminal is still the only one in the U.S. that can offload Ultra Large and Very Large Crude Carriers.

But LOOP also consists of an oil pumping facility at Port Fourchon and underground salt domes at Clovelly in Lafourche Parish used to store the crude, said LOOP’s general manager of operations Morgan Wolfe at a meeting last week of the South Central Industrial Association in Houma.

After unloading from the tankers into buoys located a couple of miles from the terminal in the Gulf, the crude oil is pumped from the terminal to Port Fourchon where it is transported to the caverns in Clovelly. The eight caverns at Clovelly can hold around 50 million barrels of crude.

From there, the oil is pumped to facilities in Baton Rouge and St. James Parish where it travels to refineries along the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest. The crude oil – from the buoys in the Gulf to the Midwest refineries – flows through LOOP pipelines all the way, controlled from LOOP offices in Galliano.

Unlike the state-run Port Fourchon, LOOP is a private operation owned by Marathon, Shell and Murphy oil companies and employing 150 people.

“We’re obligated to move oil through at a nominal profit,” Wolfe said. “With oil at $140 a barrel, we’re still not printing money.”

LOOP recently offloaded its eight billionth barrel of oil, about 1.2 million barrels a day. The tankers, some of which can hold up to three million barrels of oil, are nearly all foreign, coming from places like the North Sea and Africa. LOOP also handles smaller tankers.

Wolfe said the company is ready for hurricane strikes. “We’re the last out and the first back in,” he said. But he said LOOP has had difficulty finding skilled personnel.

Nevertheless, 13 percent of the foreign oil imported into the U.S. is transported through LOOP facilities. What is surprising, given the country’s thirst for oil, is that few tankers visited the terminal in the Gulf when it began operating in 1981. But, Wolfe said, “Today, we are healthy.”