Both dolphins and ships carrying crude oil, jet fuel and other oil and gas products cut through the turquoise waters of the Corpus Christi ship channel. The port has never been busier.
“March was the busiest month in the history of the Port of Corpus Christi,” said CEO Kent Britton. “And by all accounts, April is actually going to be even busier.”
This deepwater ship channel connects the Permian Basin, the engine of the U.S. oil and gas industry, to the global energy marketplace. And business is booming.
“So our customers here have overproduced to fill a gap for what’s not being allowed to flow through the Strait of Hormuz,” Britton said.
During the most significant oil and gas supply disruption in history, the flurry of activity at this port matters. Corpus Christi ships out about 2.5 million barrels a day, roughly half of all U.S. crude oil exports.
Crude oil exports can only grow so much because they’re limited by pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin. But liquefied natural gas is another story.
“For oil and gas, LNG is the growth. It’s the growth story of the next decade,” Britton said.
Natural gas company Cheniere is continuing to build out its export capacity in Corpus Christi at a time when the world is scrambling for natural gas, with nearly 20% of global LNG disrupted due to war in the Middle East.
That new LNG coming online was planned long before the war, but the timing is right.
“LNG, because of the expansion that’s going on, is up a lot compared to last year,” he said. “Shipments this year are up about 40% over the same period last year.”
That energy export growth has boosted the regional economy, bringing billions in investment, according to Britton, along with tens of thousands of jobs across Texas.
The port also supports jobs in the Permian Basin, where oil is being produced at record levels.
“If we didn’t have that export capacity, we couldn’t be producing oil at anywhere near the level that we’re doing. And that’s another big part of the Texas economy,” said Jesse Thompson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Further inland in Corpus Christi, metal pipes jut into the air and refineries stretch across a vast industrial area. The Bar-B-Q Man Restaurant has been co-located with the energy industry since the 1970s. Matt De Shields is the third generation owner of the restaurant, which serves up brisket, sausage, Dino ribs and turkey.
Matt De Shields is the third generation owner of the Bar-B-Q Man Restaurant, which has fed Corpus Christi’s energy industry workers since the 1970s.
Elizabeth Trovall
“90% of our customer base is going to be the industrial workers here in Corpus Christi,” De Shields said. “Our main business is lunchtime. That’s all the contractors and refinery workers that are in the area. And without them, we wouldn’t really have a business at all over here.”
Those workers can make up to six figures, so De Shields said they have money to spend, whether it’s buying BBQ, beer, or a home.
“What spurred this business back in the ‘70s, was the oil boom in the area. And we’ve kind of rocked and rolled with the industry through the ups and downs,” he said.
Offshore drilling in the region ramped up in the 1970s, as the world scrambled for oil after two supply shocks. That crisis also caused the U.S. to ban oil exports for four decades, said Bob Paulison, executive director of the Coastal Bend Industry Association, which represents energy companies located in the region.
“And that ban continued until 2015 and then it was lifted,” Paulison said.
Congress, under President Barack Obama, allowed crude oil exports to resume, as fracking revived the Permian Basin as a top oil producing region in the world.
“One of the first tankers to carry oil for export for international markets came out of Corpus Christi at the end of 2015,” Paulison said.
The Port of Corpus Christi transformed into an energy export juggernaut.
Now, the energy industry accounts for roughly 40% of local economic output, said economist Deniz Gevrek with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. And that economic impact continues to grow with the expansion of LNG exports.
“Although the workforce is not huge in numbers,” Gevrek said, “every dollar of LNG output generates more than 70 cents in our local economy.”
Whether Corpus Christi grows beyond the planned LNG expansion is unclear. Locally, the city is grappling with historic drought and war adds uncertainty as to the future of global energy markets.
Still, as conflict chokes off oil flows in the Middle East, more tankers are loading up in the Corpus Christi Bay instead, and its turquoise waters have never been busier.
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