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“There’s no coincidence to why the president stood in Corpus Christi the day he made a decision to go into Iran,” Port of Corpus Christi Commission Chairman Gabe Guerra said.
Texas port expects U.S. crude export boost to endure
Port of Corpus Christi CEO Kent Britton says exports could remain 1 million barrels a day above prewar levels
The historic boost to U.S. crude exports triggered by Iran war disruptions to global energy supply will likely endure and has even revived interest in new pipeline infrastructure, according to the head of the largest U.S. oil port.
U.S. oil exports surged this year as the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked off Mideast crude and sent buyers scrambling for alternative supplies. The market tightening was a major boon to U.S. oil companies and the ports that handle their product, including the Port of Corpus Christi.
“It’s been a nonstop parade of ships past our windows,” Port of Corpus Christi CEO Kent Britton told Bloomberg News on July 14. The port had a record first half of the year for cargoes of commodities such as oil and liquefied natural gas passing through its waterways.
As many as 6.4 million barrels a day of oil, the highest level in U.S. history, flowed from facilities along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Before the war, the U.S. exported about 4 million barrels daily. As a tentative truce between the U.S. and Iran collapses amid a new wave of attacks, the question remains whether the U.S. will entrench its status as the backstop to global oil markets.
The U.S. could likely export a million barrels a day more than prewar levels, according to Britton. “There has to be a demand signal. There has to be a supply signal from the big E&Ps who have to say that they’re willing to go fill that need,” Britton said, referring to oil producers. Some 400,000 of those daily barrels could leave from Corpus Christi and the remainder from other ports along the Gulf Coast, such as Houston and terminals in Louisiana.
“There’s no coincidence to why the president stood in Corpus Christi the day he made a decision to go into Iran,” Port of Corpus Christi Commission Chairman Gabe Guerra said.
The boost to U.S. crude exports has even revived conversations about a pipeline connecting Corpus Christi to the oil hub of Cushing, Okla., which serves as the main conduit for shipping Canadian and Bakken Basin oil to fuel makers and exporters in the U.S. Port of Corpus Christi has been in talks this year about such a pipeline, Britton said, declining to name the companies involved. Phillips 66 and Plains All American Pipeline previously planned a pipeline on the route, but the project was halted amid a slow recovery in U.S. oil output in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Corpus currently only exports barrels of oil produced in Texas from the Permian and Eagle Ford basins.
“If I were building for the future, I would get a pipeline out of Cushing,” Britton said.
