La Oil Port In Great Shape Despite Recession

Domestic production has created a second market. LOOP has pipelines tied into BP's Thunder Horse field and Shell's Mars field in the Gulf of Mexico. Links to other offshore fields may come down the road, said Dale Rollins, LOOP's vice president of business development.

"Our facility is designed to grow," he said.

The idea for an offshore oil port began "on the back of a napkin," according to Barb Hestermann, one of LOOP's marketing representatives.

Imported crude has always come into the United States on massive supertankers, some as long as the Empire State Building is tall. But such huge ships are too big for the nation's inland shipping channels.

Before LOOP, supertankers had to unload onto smaller ships capable of taking crude to inland ports. Searching for a way to sidestep that process, which was time-consuming and often resulted in spills, LOOP's developers hatched a plan for a port where supertankers could unload directly.

Still, it took more than a decade of lobbying to convince state and federal regulators to back an offshore oil port. Congress ultimately cleared the way for LOOP with the Deepwater Port Act of 1974.