Oil terminal may affect Mid-Barataria

Docking facilities for a proposed 20M barrel crude oil export storage terminal for post-Panamax ocean-going vessels and barges to be berthed there may reduce by as much as 17 percent of the land-building ability of Louisiana’s proposed $1.4B Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion just downstream on the Mississippi River, warns Bruce Lelong, project leader with AECOM, the state contractor overseeing engineering and design of the diversion for the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority in an Aug. 30 email sent to subcontractors. “I expect it will have significant and potentially adverse impacts to MBSD,” he wrote an an e-mail to subcontractors, and citing a 2012 study completed by the Water Institute of the Gulf for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority about an earlier plan to build a coal export facility on the same property. The oil terminal is being proposed by the Plaquemines Port and Harbor District, Tallgrass Energy LP, and Drexel Hamilton, a Philadelphia-based investment firm, and would be operated by Tallgrass. The Plaquemines Parish Council has approved the issuance of up to $650 million in revenue bonds to underwrite Drexel Hamilton’s recently created Plaquemines Liquids Terminal LLC. (Source: NOLA.com 11/01/18)