For more than 30 years, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port LLC has been a symbol of U.S. dependence on foreign oil, pumping Nigerian and Saudi Arabian crude from the world’s biggest supertankers into underground storage caverns beneath the marshes of southern Louisiana. Now, with domestic production at a 28-year high, LOOP’s managers are thinking the previously unthinkable: They want to reverse the flows and send North American oil out as well as take foreign oil in. To be an outbound hub, the port needs financial commitments from shippers to build needed infrastructure, and even under the most optimistic scenario, it will be a year before it loads the first tanker, Barb Hestermann, LOOP’s business development manager, said by phone yesterday. Still, the fact that LOOP is considering the project underscores how shale drilling and oil-sands mining have altered energy flows in North America . “This is what oil independence […]