Plaquemines Oil Terminal

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Plaquemines Oil Terminal, also known as the Plaquemines Liquids Terminal, was a proposed oil export terminal in Corpus Christi, Texas, United States. As of December 2021 it is cancelled.

Location

The terminal was proposed to be located on the west bank of the Mississippi River near Phoenix, Plaquemines Parrish, Louisiana.

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Project Details

• Owner: Tallgrass Energy
• Parent company: Tallgrass Energy
• Location: Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States
• Coordinates: 29.668286,-89.967324 (exact)
• Capacity: 800,000 million barrels per day
• Status: Cancelled (2021)
• Type: Export
• Cost: US$2.5 billion
• Start Year: 2020

Note: mtpa = million tonnes per year; bcfd = billion cubic feet per day

Background

The $2.5 billion project was approved by the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in April 2019. The terminal would be located next to the planned $1.4 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion and “is not inconsistent” with the coastal Master Plan, according to DNR.

In November 2021, Tallgrass Energy announced it was cancelling the project, after opposition from residents that the terminal would be built on a historic slave burial ground, in addition to concerns raised by Earthjustice.

Opposition

The April 2019 ruling that the project was "not inconsistent" with the coastal Master Plan was contingent on a memorandum of understanding between Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the Plaquemines Port and Plaquemines Liquids Terminal that called for a navigation study and a sediment transport modeling study assessing any impacts of the project on the diversion. As of January 2020 these studies had not been made public.

Opponents of the project also object to the state's decision to hold a single public hearing to discuss two different kinds of permits for the project: the coastal permit required from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the air permit required from the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

The environmental group Earthjustice has raised concerns about the impact of the project on nearby communities. "The Tallgrass Oil Terminal would be built on a greenfield site adjacent to the Plaquemines Parish community of Ironton, also within approximately two miles of the communities of Myrtle Grove and Phoenix," said Earthjustice attorney Michael Brown in a Jan. 9 letter to DEQ.