MARAD’s 2026 Deepwater Port Proposal:
The Process Behind the Approval
MARAD’s November 5 proposal changes offshore-port licensing procedures. Read the agency roles, hearing deadlines and remaining conditions.
A new federal proposal would put the application process for offshore oil and natural-gas ports under the Maritime Administration, while leaving the Coast Guard responsible for major safety functions. For coastal communities and project developers, the important question is not simply which agency receives the paperwork. It is how a complete application, an environmental review, a governor’s decision and a conditional approval fit together before construction can begin.
This report is based on the published Federal Register proposal and federal source documents. It does not describe a site visit or an engineering assessment of any individual terminal.
The Maritime Administration, or MARAD, published its proposed deepwater-port processing rules on November 5. Public comments are due January 4, 2027, under docket MARAD-2026-0728. The document is a proposal, not a final regulation, and it does not approve every offshore energy project that might use the resulting process. Its central institutional change implements a transfer already directed by Congress in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
A deepwater port is a legal category, not just a large harbor
The Deepwater Port Act concerns offshore facilities beyond state seaward boundaries used for oil or natural gas transportation. The proposal describes fixed or floating structures, other than vessels, used as terminals and connected with shore through subsea pipelines. It is not a general permitting rewrite for every container dock, cruise terminal, refinery or dredged shipping channel in the United States.
A photograph of an LNG ship in a coastal harbor can help explain vessel operations, but it does not establish that the harbor is a licensed deepwater port. The same distinction applies to an onshore LNG facility. Ship inspection, terminal approval, pipeline regulation and offshore-port licensing are related activities with different legal boundaries. Readers evaluating a project announcement should first identify the physical facilities included in the application and the particular authority under which the decision is being made.
The proposed regulations would sit in 46 CFR part 248. They largely adopt and replace the application-processing and environmental-review provisions now associated with Coast Guard regulations in 33 CFR part 148, while incorporating statutory changes and some clarifications first proposed in 2015. That is a more precise description than saying that an entirely new system has appeared overnight.
One lead agency does not mean one agency does every job
MARAD would manage the application process and lead the National Environmental Policy Act review. The Coast Guard would retain responsibilities for the design, construction, equipment and operation of deepwater ports, navigational safety, and risk and consequence assessment. The proposal explicitly distinguishes those retained functions from the administrative work being transferred.
This creates a division between coordinating a licensing decision and supplying specialized safety judgments. Concentrating correspondence and environmental-review management at MARAD could reduce duplicated administrative steps. It would not make vessel movements, mooring arrangements or hazardous-cargo risks disappear from the review. Nor would it turn a licensing official into the sole technical regulator for every component of a project.
The application requirements also point to other agencies. Offshore pipelines raise Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration requirements. Environmental authorizations can involve the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Coastal Zone Management Act and Rivers and Harbors Act. An applicant would need to supply copies of relevant filed or draft permit applications. The practical test of coordination is therefore whether the lead agency has assembled a usable record from the responsible authorities, not whether all those authorities have vanished.
The application clock has several different starting points
The proposal’s timeline begins with a notice of application after MARAD determines that the submitted material is sufficient for processing. A developer announcing that it has filed paperwork is therefore not necessarily announcing that the statutory review clock has begun. Completeness is a substantive threshold: the agency needs enough information to evaluate the facility rather than only a statement of commercial intent.
Under proposed section 248.22, a public hearing in each adjacent coastal state would take place within 240 days of publication of the application notice. At the completion of the NEPA review, when an environmental impact statement is required, MARAD would publish notice that the final statement is available. A final public hearing would then be held in each adjacent coastal state, and the agency would issue its record of decision within 90 days after the final public hearing.
Those periods should not be compressed into a promise that a project will be operating within a fixed number of months. The start point is a sufficient application, not the first corporate announcement. The record of decision is a licensing determination, not proof that every condition has been met. Construction, installation, testing, operations and decommissioning requirements may remain in the conditions attached to that decision, along with requirements imposed by other agencies.
There is also a proposed process for missing information. An applicant receiving an additional-information request could seek a technical-assistance meeting with MARAD and relevant cooperating agencies. If the applicant needs more time to respond, it could request suspension of the processing timeline. MARAD says the proposed approach would replace agency-driven extensions with suspension at the applicant’s request. The document also explains that insufficient information can lead to denial if the required material is not supplied within the applicable period, including approved suspensions.
The governor’s 45-day window is not the general comment deadline
The proposal would clarify when governors of adjacent coastal states can approve or disapprove a particular license application. MARAD would accept those decisions only during the 45-day period following the close of the application’s final public hearing. A submission made before that hearing concludes would not be accepted under the proposed language. If the governor does not transmit approval or disapproval within the prescribed period, approval would be presumed.
That window is separate from January 4, 2027, the deadline for commenting on this national rulemaking. The rulemaking concerns the process itself. A later project-specific hearing concerns a named application and its proposed location, design and effects. Confusing the two can cause a reader to look for a project decision in a procedural docket or to assume that a national comment deadline ends every opportunity to participate in an individual review.
The proposal also would omit an older regulatory route for a state to petition for designation as an adjacent coastal state because Congress repealed that route in 2023. That does not justify guessing which states qualify for a future project. The project record and the applicable statutory definition still need to be consulted. Geographic proximity alone is not a substitute for the formal designation used in the licensing process.
Environmental scope is a central policy question
Proposed section 248.44 states that environmental evaluations would focus on the project covered by the application and would not typically analyze possible effects of separate upstream and downstream projects, or impacts beyond the project’s direct impacts, unless required by law. MARAD connects that approach to the Supreme Court’s Seven County Infrastructure Coalition decision and asks whether additional regulatory changes are needed in light of that decision.
This is not equivalent to saying that the proposal eliminates environmental review. The following sections still describe review of construction, operation and decommissioning, vessels serving the port, servicing activities, shore-based fabrication and supporting facilities where appropriate, the no-action alternative and other reasonable alternatives. Alternatives can include different sites, technologies and pipeline routes.
The policy question is where the project boundary is drawn and how that boundary affects the evidence considered. An application could include an offshore terminal, subsea pipeline and specified shoreside facilities. Separate projects elsewhere in an energy supply chain raise a different scope question. A careful account should identify which effects are being discussed rather than treating every upstream or downstream activity as automatically included or automatically excluded in every case.
The proposed resource categories are broad. They include geology and seismicity, air and water quality, wetlands, floodplains, stormwater, threatened and endangered species, essential fish habitat, historic and tribal resources, traffic, safety, land use and visual effects. The evaluation also considers currents, waves and risks that winds, weather and geological conditions pose to the port itself. Environmental assessment is thus not only an inventory of harm a project might cause; it also concerns how the environment could affect the facility’s safe operation.
MARAD’s separate finding that this administrative rulemaking qualifies for a categorical exclusion should not be mistaken for a blanket environmental exemption for every future terminal. The agency is discussing the effect of reorganizing the processing regulations. An individual application has its own factual record and environmental-review requirements. The distinction is especially important when reading headlines that use the word “exempt” without specifying the action being evaluated.
Existing surveys may be usable, but age is not the only test
One proposed flexibility would allow applicants to submit existing hydrographic and engineering geological survey data collected within the previous five years, or older material with MARAD’s approval, rather than automatically commissioning entirely new offshore surveys. The detailed discussion also calls for newer information at locations with high hydrographic variability and emphasizes meteorological and oceanographic data.
A five-year allowance does not establish that a five-year-old map is adequate everywhere. Mobile sediments, changes after storms and site-specific geological conditions can make the location of a measurement as important as its date. The proposal’s own distinction between older accepted data and newer information in variable areas recognizes that a uniform age threshold cannot answer every engineering question.
For readers, the evidence to look for is the survey’s coverage, collection date, methods and relevance to the proposed structures and routes. A map may accurately describe the area it measured while leaving a different pipeline corridor insufficiently characterized. Reusing a survey can reduce duplication, but the reason it is usable should be explained. A broad assertion that the seabed has already been surveyed is less informative than an account of which measurements support which design decisions.
The proposal also clarifies that engineering geological review concerns more than soil alone. It encourages early consultation about offshore pipelines and risk assessment. These provisions indicate that streamlining can involve asking for the right information earlier, not merely reducing the volume of information submitted. A shorter correspondence chain and a better-supported application are compatible objectives, but neither follows automatically from changing the name on the application form.
The $350,000 fee is not the full cost of a review
MARAD would retain a nonrefundable application fee of $350,000. The proposal explains that applicants remain responsible for reimbursing government processing costs. The initial fee therefore should not be presented as a flat price that covers every expense associated with securing and carrying out a deepwater-port license.
The government’s costs can include completeness review, participation in meetings and hearings, travel, environmental-review work and other processing activities. The proposal anticipates administrative efficiencies but says MARAD cannot estimate the expected savings for operators. It requests evidence about potential direct savings from compliance costs, processing and other aspects of the proposal.
That limitation matters when evaluating claims about cheaper energy or faster development. Reducing duplicated paperwork may be useful, but the proposal supplies no quantified estimate that can be converted into a household gas-bill reduction. Offshore construction costs, financing, commercial contracts, equipment, pipeline connections and the timing of demand are not determined by the application fee. A claim about lower project administrative costs is not the same as evidence of a specific price benefit for consumers.
A concrete paperwork change is easier to describe: the proposal would require one printed and one electronic application copy to MARAD, replacing multiple-copy distribution requirements involving several agencies. That is a defined administrative simplification. Its value can be assessed without expanding it into an unsupported prediction about the profitability, completion date or retail-price effect of a future terminal.
Approval still depends on more than procedural speed
The proposed approval criteria include the applicant’s financial ability to construct, own, operate and decommission the port, compliance with applicable laws and license conditions, and financial responsibility for oil-pollution liabilities. They also address national interest, navigation, best available technology to prevent or minimize marine environmental impacts, relevant environmental requirements and adjacent-state participation.
Decommissioning is particularly easy to miss when a project is described only through construction jobs and export capacity. The criteria ask whether the applicant can support the facility across its life, including its eventual end. Financial capability is not simply a financing announcement at the beginning of construction. The licensing framework needs a party able to meet the obligations attached to ownership and operation over time.
Navigation also remains a public-use question. Offshore energy facilities occupy waters used by other vessels and activities. The approval test concerns unreasonable interference with international navigation and other reasonable uses of the high seas. That is different from asking only whether the terminal can physically receive its own tankers. The broader traffic context belongs in the record.
For those following a named project, the most informative document after a favorable announcement is often the record of decision and its conditions. It can show what has been decided, what remains to be demonstrated and which agencies retain subsequent responsibilities. A project described as approved may still be working toward the actual license or toward later construction and operating milestones. The proposed rule expressly preserves that possibility.
How to follow the proposal without confusing the stages
Start with the published November 5 Federal Register document, numbered 2026-22617, and docket MARAD-2026-0728. Read the sections that correspond to the issue at hand: application completeness, missing-information requests, public hearings, state participation, environmental scope or licensing criteria. The rulemaking is easier to understand when each section is tied to a decision instead of read as a single announcement about deregulation.
Comments submitted to the public docket are generally posted without change, including personal information included in them. The notice permits anonymous comments and gives separate instructions for confidential business information. Those distinctions should be checked before submitting material. This article does not submit comments or recommend a position on behalf of any reader.
After the comment period, watch for the agency’s next formal action rather than assuming that the proposal will take effect unchanged. For a specific terminal, follow its separate application notice, environmental documents, final hearing, state decision and record of decision. Those records reveal whether the administrative realignment is producing clearer decisions and what obligations remain before a facility can actually be built and operated.
MARAD, Deepwater Port Application Processing and Licensing, November 5, 2026
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