LOOP Onshore Storage Facility, Louisiana

The Clovelly Salt Dome south of Houma, is an underground geologic salt formation that has been turned into a storage site for petroleum, with eight caverns and a 50 million barrel capacity. It is an onshore terminal connected by pipeline to a tanker port in the Gulf, off Port Fourchon. The system is known as the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, or LOOP, and was built for imported oil, coming by ship. Its large surface pool holds super saturated liquid brine, used to push oil out with minimum degradation of the dome. There is also a major helicopter airport here, the Chevron Galliano Airbase, used for shuttling workers to and from remote and offshore oil production platforms.