Connecting Bakken Crude Oil With Nation's Largest Port And Export To Asia -- July 24, 2017

Updates

February 13, 2018: US supertanker terminal set to export oil for the first time.

February 13, 2018: LOOP testing begins for bidirectional crude oil flows (loading/unloading) for supertankers in the GoM for export.
 

Original Post

 

Don sent me the link to this story. He wanted to point out that one VLCC can carry 2 million bbls of oil, or the equivalent of two days of North Dakota crude oil production.

I replied that this story is such a great story on so many levels, but for me, personally, it's almost a personal story.

Had it not been for the blog, I probably wouldn't have thought much more about the story than what the writers write.

The story is about LOOP, America's biggest oil port. I only know about it because of RBN Energy. I've blogged often on LOOP.

The post at this link is perhaps one of my favorite posts and it just happens to reference LOOP without mentioning it by name. The caption for the photograph at the linked story fails to mention:

• that the ship was a VLCC -- a very large crude carrier
• that the Louisiana port had to have been LOOP

There are also a couple of other data points not mentioned. More on that later. For now, back to the linked Bloomberg story. Data points:

• LOOP: Lousiana Offshore Oil Port
• the only terminal along the US Gulf Coast able to handle a fully laden VLCC
• currently, an import-only port for VLCC's
• considering become an export port also as early as next year

From the linked story:

Currently, shippers have to load oil onto smaller tankers in ports such as Houston or Corpus Christi, Texas, that then transfer their cargoes onto Very Large Crude Carriers sitting offshore. That adds cost and time to the shipments. While Corpus Christi received its first VLCC at the end of May, the port’s channel isn’t deep enough for a ship that size to load a full cargo.

All previously posted at the blog.

Earlier I mentioned that the linked Bloomberg article was remiss in not mentioning two other points:

• all of this only works for the simple fact that it just turns out that the Panama Canal, recently expanded, is now able to handle VLCCs; and,
• although the law was changed under President Obama to allow oil exports once again, I can only assume exports are going a whole more smoothly under the current president than things would be going under President Obama.

I could be wrong on that last note, but I doubt it. I'll leave it at that.

Oh, I almost forgot. The St James Hub in Louisiana is an important terminal for Bakken oil arriving by CBR. From St James, oil is then taken by pipeline to LOOP.

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Richard Burton

I am ambivalent about Richard Burton. I assume it has something to do with his off-camera life, his personal life. Whatever.

My "feelings" about Richard Burton have changed completely -- I'm watching The Night of the Iguana on TCM -- and Burton is simply a hoot. When Johnny Depp is at his best, it seems Depp is channeling Richard Burton in Iguana.

Interestingly, this is what one reviewer had to say about Burton in this movie (from wiki):

[Burton] was spectacularly gross, a figure of wild disarrangement, but without a shred of real sincerity. You see a pot-bellied scarecrow flapping erratically. And in his ridiculous early fumbling with the Lolitaish Sue Lyon (whose acting is painfully awkward), he is farcical when he isn't grotesque.

I can't speak to Sue Lyon's performance but I think the critic completely misread Burton's performance.  The very same thing happened in the first installment of The Pirates with the lead role played by Depp.

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Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes?

George Jones