OREANDA-NEWS. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is seeking shipper commitments for proposed marine vessel crude loading services,another sign of how the recent surge in US crude production is changing the country's infrastructure.

The new services would provide connecting logistics from LOOP's hub in Clovelly, Louisiana, to its deepwater port, 17 miles (27km) offshore of Port Fourchon. The marine vessel loading would include two mooring points with capacity to load a vessel each day. LOOP's deepwater port currently has the capacity to offload the same marine vessels and move crude from the port to the Clovelly hub.

LOOP has safely offloaded more than 10bn bl of crude since 1981, said president Tom Shaw. "Loading these same vessels at the port is a natural fit for our expertise, personnel and equipment."

LOOP is the only port in the US capable of offloading deep draft tankers known as Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCC) and Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC), but it has shifted focus as the once-steady import business has dwindled as US domestic production has grown. LOOP now transits and stores significant amounts of domestically produced crude. Exports of lightly processed condensate have grown over the past year, while Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex has been cleared to swap up to 75,000 b/d of its heavy crudes for light US crude — both of which could be possible business for LOOP's proposed service. The proposed marine vessel loading services would begin in 2018.

It is an important storage terminal for volumes arriving from offshore US Gulf of Mexico, and by the Zydeco pipeline (formerly known as the Ho-Ho pipeline) or by water from Texas. It is the delivery point for pricing deepwater crudes Mars and Thunder Horse.

LOOP is planning to add six crude storage tanks at Clovelly boosting capacity at the hub by 2.2mn bl. The incremental storage will bring total capacity at Clovelly to more than 71mn bl, including 11.2mn in aboveground storage and 60mn bl underground.

LOOP is owned by Marathon, Valero, and Shell Oil.