US oil export infrastructure faces post-boom bust

Previous anxieties over lack of infrastructure have been replaced with fears of looming overcapacity

Unbuilt US oil export terminal projects proposed in recent years are stuck in limbo, their prospects for construction bleak. And while capacity at existing terminals has continued to grow, oil flows into and through these facilities have been unable to match the expansion. This is a distinct turnaround from twelve months ago, when there were concerns about crude bottlenecks on the Gulf Coast and a lack of capacity to accommodate booming exports. Global energy demand destruction sparked by the pandemic has upended all forecasts and turned the problem dramatically on its head. The flurry of new deepwater crude terminal proposals kicked off in 2018 as developers scrambled to provide new capacit