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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 9, 1978)
A Glossary of Gift Ideas Page 6 THE BATTALION THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1978 TEXAS MOBILE HOME OUTLET ■ New '79 Models! coming in DAILY I Offshore port to store foreign oil — New 14 ft. wide area — 2 bedrooms — Furnished — Air conditioned — Delivered Sandpoint MOBILE HOMES only 131 94 monthly taczr COLLEGE AVE TEXAS AVE Texas\ Mobile Home Outlet inc AT THE INTERSECTION OF TEXAS AVE 4 HWY. 21 Phone 822-9140 EAST BYPASS a luxuriant w f the violin inborn that sages appear - each with an succession of rhe New York Post rJVEMBER 14, 1978 rjdder Auditorium .lie—$5.90, $4.75, $3.90 Fint/Date—$4.85, $3.95, $3.25 Tickets and Informatioh- MSC Box Office at 845-291 6 United Press International HARVEY, La. — At first glance, there are a lot of similarities be tween the $513 million Louisiana Offshore Oil Port and the $9 billion Alaskan Pipeline: —Both have a capacity of about 1.2 million barrels of oil daily. —Both use 48-inch pipeline to transport the oil. —Both were long-delayed by environmental objections and studies. —Both are owned by a consor tium of oil companies. Despite the similarities, there’s a key difference: While the Alaskan Pipeline was built to reduce the United States’ dependence on im ported crude oil, LOOP is planned to facilitate it. Some preliminary work has been done and construction of LOOP is to begin shortly. A drilling rig will be moved into position over a salt dome in south Louisiana marshland to start work on a huge hole in the ground. From there, the imported oil will be stored and transferred. When it begins operations — scheduled for the summer of 1980 — LOOP will be the only port in the United States large enough to handle supertankers longer than four football fields, or 10 times the size of the 50,000-deadweight ton tankers that ply most U.S. waters with oil supplies. “Our superport will be environmentally safer than having dozens of antiquated small tankers unloading in the middle of busy ports,” said Gov. Edwin Edwards, an ardent LOOP supporter. Safety seems to be the biggest question in many people’s minds about the giant project, which in cludes a platform 19 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico with unload ing facilities for supertankers; an offshore pipeline; a buried onshore pipeline; an onshore pumping sta tion and underground storage facilities for 32 million barrels of im ported oil — about a five-day supply for the entire country. Planning for LOOP began six years ago. Since that time, blueprints have been drawn up, computer models arranged, federal permits obtained, extensive wildlife studies under taken and a 30-volume environ mental impact statement prepared. ‘ If it is successful, it will save mil lions of dollars a year for the ship pers transporting oil into the United States and reduce the number of ac cidents involving tankers. Essentially, the port consists of two parts — mooring facilities and pipeline facilities. Offshore, supertankers will moor to buoys as large as two-story houses and pump off the oil. The tankers, which float in up to 90 feet of water, are too long and too heavy to move into existing U.S. ports. “Since in this country, we can’t bring the ship to the port, we plan to take the port to the ship,” said LOOP president Bill Read. The other part of LOOP is the combination of pumping stations, pipelines and storage facilities which will transfer the oil from offshore at a rate of 100,000 barrels an hour — 4,200,000 gallons — and transfer it to existing pipelines for shipment to refineries as far away as Buffalo, N.Y. The oil will be stored briefly in a massive underground complex in the Clovelly Salt Dome, a geograph ical formation that can serve as a giant bottle for crude oil similar to above-ground tank farms. LOOP officials say underground pipelines and storage are one of many features of the port that are safer than present methods of han dling crude oil. Bill Binger, LOOP construction vice president, said computers have already projected the "worst possi ble accident,” a break in the under- (jrranafvi 7? Only 10 and Ir'ips ~fo gQ. Capn. The Cow Hop RESTAURANT SLICED BARBEQUE SANDWICH 96c “AN AGGIE TRADITION” 846-1588 (with this coupon) ■•ulfcs&i. EXPIRES NOV. 13, 1Sf78 317 UNIVERSITY DR. (NORTHGATE) O ^ § 52 (A C O w SB > m fio Glossary of Gift Ideas By Texas A&M Bookstore Approximately 25o TI TLES from which to make your gift selection. Save from 1/3 to 1/2 or more OFF the publishers list price. i* ground pipeline in Louisiana’s wildlife-rich wetlands southwest of New Orleans. He said sensors would detect the leak almost im mediately and halt the three 6,000- horsepower pumps pushing oil from offshore into the system. Another threat, that of a hur ricane in the Gulf, is discounted by Binger. The supertankers will have to move away from the port to ride out the storm, but the platform itself is designed to withstand a so-called “100-year storm”- the worst possible storm which might happen every 100 years - and could not be heavily damaged, he said. A LOOP safety officer will be on duty 24 hours a day. Special "moor ing masters” will guide supertankers to the floating buoys to which they tie up. Two full-time Coast Guard inspectors will oversee the entire operation. Nicholls State University has studied offshore marine life in the area where the platform will be built and LOOP will fund continuing studies to determine the impact of the port’s operations. And while the concept of an offshore oil port for supertankers is new to the United States, LOOP of ficials point out about 150 similar offshore ports are already in opera tion. The design for LOOP, in fact, was based on the offshore port at Ju’aymah, Saudi Arabia. Some problems are inevitable, however. When he granted the federal license in 1976, Transportation Sec retary William Coleman said a loss of more than 200,000 gallons of oil is expected annually from the facilites, “exclusive of a major oil spill.” “If a significant amount of oil should enter the Louisiana coastal wetlands as a result of a major spill, extensive damage could result,” he said. Coleman said construction would disturb seabottoms at the platform and wetlands along the onshore pipeline route, but predicted LOOP - ,v -. fm still would reduce the risk of acci dents and spills from present ship ping methods. Much as the Alaskan pipeline changed the face of that state forever, LOOP and related de velopments like new refineries and petrochemical industries will have a major impact on Louisiana. The New York Times, in fact, said that while the nation’s oil industry was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Texas, “Louisiana may be where it settles down” because of LOOP. One of every 10 jobs in Louisiana is oil-related. Nearly half the state’s revenues come from fees, taxes and royalties on oil and gas production and processing. The petrochemical industry cor ridor that now exists along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Baton Rouge is expected to grow and prosper when LOOP opens and provides a ready-made supply of raw materials. One 1976 study foresaw more than 30,000 new jobs in the area by 1990 and $5.6 billion in new oil-related industrial invest ment. "If any more refineries are built in this country, they will be built in Louisiana,” LOOP president Read predicted. The offshore port is owned by five oil companies — Ashland Oil, Inc., which owns 18.6 percent; Marathon Pipe Line Co. (32.1 percent); Mur phy Oil Corp. (3.2 percent); Shell Oil Co. (19.5 percent), and Texaco Inc., 26.6 percent. It started out as a consortium of seven companies and at one point included 16, but many dropped out due to delays and changing financial arrangements. LOOP's federal charter makes it a “common carrier” open to all com panies. The saving in shipping costs alone could be almost $50 million in the first year of operation. LOOP says the cost of using its facility — to be fixed by the federal government — will be about 10 i.V.-l* cents per barrel less than cowl tional methods. That would innil $150,000 saving per voyage I 250,000-ton supertanker. Witli tankers expected in port the! year, the total saved basedJ LOOP estimates would be Hil million. The port is being financed!) $450 million in tax-exempt I sold Aug. 23. The bonds will kl paid with revenue from the port) LOOP is the only deepwaterpi scheduled for construction United States, hut several otk have been considered andoneii| waiting approval from the fed government. Greek tycoon Aristotle Ora made feelers in the early build a deepwater port and refinery near Portsmouth, Nlj They were rejected due environmental considerations. Galveston is planning to drede| channel 54 feet deep and Christi a similar project 721 deep. While they will be able) handle larger tankers than ports do now, Binger and otb LOOP officials say they pose) threat to the success of Louisian project because fully loaded s tankers require up to 90 feetj water. The Texas Deepwater Port! thority is seeking a Departmei]| Transportation license for a [ similar to LOOP 25 miles soutll Freeport. That was originally a a vately planned and owned proj«j like LOOP, but private spoils pulled out and the Texas Legislated created the authority to rescuei project if possible without comif ting taxpayer funds or state cred Even if that port is built) Freeport, officials of both 10 and TDPA say it will serve a ( ent market than the middle Amea and northeast market LOOPi reach through interconnedi pipelines. I PlEKXSU^ A