Licensing of offshore ports shifts in effort to speed projects

(The Center Square) – Federal licensing of offshore deepwater port facilities will shift to the U.S. Maritime Administration, a change intended to speed the approval of facilities that can accommodate larger vessels transporting crude oil and natural gas.The role, previously held by the U.S. Coast Guard, moved to the Maritime Administration in January as a result of the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025. The Administration, which had led other aspects of the permitting process, will now serve as the lead in federal environmental reviews of infrastructure projects located more than 12 miles off the U.S. coast that seek to import and export oil and gas.“With this change, we’ll soon accelerate project approvals so the nation can safely utilize more of its abundant natural resources, create more high paying jobs, and lower energy costs for American families,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The move could streamline a permitting process the energy industry has described as onerous.Oil and gas giant Enterprise Product Partner remained in regulatory review for five years before receiving a license in April 2024 for its deepwater Sea Port Oil Terminal, which could provide up to 2 million barrels a day of loading capacity off the Texas coast. The Houston-based company said it has not begun construction due to “ongoing commercial uncertainty.” Enterprise said it worked with federal, state and local authorities and participated in “multiple public meetings that have allowed individuals and stakeholder groups to learn about the project and provide their comments to multiple environmental impact studies.””The exhaustive analysis associated with the project and continuous responses to requests for information from the various agencies produced more than 30,000 pages of documentation,” Enterprise said. More than a dozen federal governmental agencies took part in the review, according to the company.Earthworks, an environmental advocacy group, said the regulatory shift “could advance four offshore oil and gas export terminals in Texas and Louisiana, including the first floating LNG export terminal in the U.S., without fully assessing their environmental and safety risks.”“The shift hands off environmental and safety risk assessments to the Maritime Administration, which has been criticized for lacking the proper expertise and staffing capacity to take them on,” Earthworks said in a statement posted on its website. Offshore ports can accommodate the water depths required for the industry’s largest ships that many onshore ports cannot. The Port of Corpus Christi in south Texas, which currently accounts for more than 50% of all U.S. crude oil exports, has a ship channel that is 54 feet deep, less than the 65 to 70-foot depths required by the largest vessels.The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, located 18 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana, is the only offshore port now operating in U.S. waters. LOOP, a joint venture between Shell, Marathon Petroleum and Valero Energy, could export up to 1.2 million barrels of oil per day but long distances to the high-growth Permian and Bakken shale plays, the main sources of U.S. export-grade light sweet crude, drive up costs.The American Association of Port Authorities, a longtime supporter of streamlining the federal permitting process, praised the announcement as “common sense policy changes .. that cut red tape and speed up the environmental review process,” according to John Bressler, the organization’s vice president of governmental relations. “They are good for America’s ports, our economy, and whole nation.”The organization asserts that because the Maritime Administration is within the Department of Transportation, similar to the agencies that regulate railroads and U.S. highways, the port program will benefit from the same “efficiencies” and streamlined grant administration procedures seen in other transportation sectors.