“We want your crude,” Omar Garcia from the Port of Corpus Christi told members of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association last week. The port reached the milestone of one million barrels of crude oil exports per day this summer, Garcia said, and he forecast exports from the port will climb to between two and three million barrels per day in the next two or three years thanks to production from Permian Basin. “The oil export ban being lifted has changed the Port of Corpus Christi,” he told the Midland Reporter Telegram. He said the port and the companies that operate there now account for a third of all jobs in the Corpus Christi metropolitan area.
An improvement project to widen and deepen the Corpus Christi ship channel began in May, and the Carlyle Group announced plans to develop a crude export terminal on Harbor Island to accommodate fully-loaded VLCCs.