Corpus Christi set to become energy export hub for US

Fuel Fix:
A Washington investment firm is making a $400 million bet that will allow Corpus Christi to regain and keep its status as the top U.S. crude oil exporter.

The Port of Corpus Christi was the location of the first U.S. crude oil export in December 2015. The South Texas waterway remained the top U.S. crude oil export hub until last month, when recently completed pipeline projects allowed the Port of Houston to claim the title.

During a Tuesday morning panel discussion at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, Carlyle Group Managing Director Ferris Hussein said the firm is investing $400 million into a project that will catch a wave of new Permian Basin to Gulf Coast crude oil pipelines that are expected to come into service over the next year and a half shifting exports back to Corpus Christi.

"Corpus Christi will surpass Houston as the export hub of the U.S.," Hussein said.

With three pipeline projects poised to move more than 2. 3 million barrels of crude oil per day from the Permian Basin to Corpus Christi coming into service by mid-2020, the Carlyle Group is partnering with the Port of Corpus Christi to develop a crude oil export terminal near Port Aransas on Harbor Island that will accommodate Very Large Crude Carriers. Known in the industry as VLCCs, the supertankers can haul 2 million barrels of crude oil in a single load, making them attractive to exporters.

However, a fully-loaded VLCC requires 75 feet of water. The port is deepening and widening the Corpus Christi Ship Channel to 54 feet deep that will allow partial loading of VLCC at facilities along the ship channel. But the Carlyle Group is providing $400 million to further deepen the waterway to 75 feet along a three-mile stretch from the mouth of the ship channel to Harbor Island. If approved by regulators, the Harbor Island crude oil export terminal will be able to accommodate 20 VLCC tankers per month as soon as October 2020, Hussein said.

"We'll have 54 feet in about 10 months and then we'll move from 54 feet to 75 feet in about a year, it's just a question of when we get the dredging crews in the water," Hussein said.
...
Other export terminals for the large tankers have been proposed along the Gulf Coast, But Corpus Christi appears to have a head start at this point.  It is where the bulk of the pipeline capacity will be headed.  Corpus Christi Bay is the second windiest one in the US.  On San Francisco Bay has stronger winds.  The sailors will likely keep their boats out of the ship channel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more