Sabine Pass, TX/LA · $85B (proposal)
SAB-16 · Sabine Pass Industrial Sluice Shield
Heavy deepwater gates at Sabine Pass on the Texas-Louisiana border, built with zero-vibration boring to avoid disturbing the dense cluster of refineries and LNG terminals nearby — a storm shield specifically for America's energy export infrastructure.
Pros
- Protects the highest-value industrial target on the Gulf Coast — the economic case is unusually clear.
- Zero-vibration construction methods genuinely exist and are used near sensitive infrastructure.
- A single pass means a single gate complex, not a sprawling system.
Cons
- Building next to live refineries means any construction accident has catastrophic downside.
- The beneficiaries are largely private energy companies — the public-funding case is murky.
- 900,000 tons of marine steel competes with every other gate project for the same mills.
Feasibility: Buildable and arguably the easiest political sell on the Gulf list — industry co-funding is plausible given what's at stake. The engineering is conventional sluice-gate work. The open question is who pays: this looks more like a public-private partnership than a pure public works project.
Aerial mock-up: Heavy industrial deepwater gates in massive concrete housings, flanked by energy processing facilities, sitting retracted and ready to seal the pass.
