LOOP Program

BATON ROUGE - LOOP is America's first and only deepwater port. LOOP provides tanker offloading and temporary storage services for crude oil transported on some of the largest tankers in the world. Most tankers offloading at LOOP are too large for U.S. inland ports.

Tankers offload at LOOP by pumping crude oil through hoses connected to a Single Point Mooring (SPM) base. Some of these vessels require water depths of 85 feet--the water depth at each of LOOP's SPMs is 115 feet. Three SPMs are located 8,000 feet from the Marine Terminal. The SPMs are designed to handle ships up to 700,000 deadweight tons. The SPMs are 21 feet in diameter, 46 feet high and are anchored to a seabed base with an anchor chain. Mooring lines connect the bow of a tanker to the buoy and flexible hoses are used to transport crude oil from the tanker to a submarine pipeline. The buoy and hoses can rotate a full 360 degrees allowing the tanker to maintain a heading of least resistance to wind and waves.

The crude oil then moves to the Marine Terminal via a 56-inch diameter submarine pipeline. Its offshore marine terminal facilities are located 18 miles south of Grand Isle. It consists of a control platform and a pumping platform.

The control platform is equipped with a helo pad, living quarters, control room, vessel traffic control station, offices and life support equipment. The pumping platform contains four 7,000-hp pumps, power generators, metering and laboratory facilities. Crude oil is only handled on the pumping platform where it is measured, sampled and boosted to shore via a 48-inch diameter pipeline.

LOOP's onshore facilities, Fourchon Booster Station and Clovelly Dome Storage Terminal, are located just on-shore in Fourchon, LA and 25 miles inland near Galliano, LA.

The Fourchon Booster Station has four 6,000-hp pumps which increases the pressure and crude oil flow en route to the Clovelly Dome Storage Terminal. The facility also supplies diesel fuel to LOOP's Marine Terminal via a 4-inch diameter pipeline. The Clovelly Dome Storage Terminal is used to store crude oil in underground salt caverns before it is shipped to the various refineries. The terminal consists of eight caverns with a total capacity of 40 million barrels, a pump station with four 6,000-hp pumps, meters to measure the crude oil receipts and deliveries, and a 25 million barrel Brine Storage Reservoir.