Posted on June 16, 2025
The 35-year dream of widening the Corpus Christi Ship Channel and deepening it to 54 feet from the old 47 feet is at long last a reality. The $625 million project also has spurred marine-terminal owners in Corpus Christi and Ingleside to undertake — or at least consider — major dock and dredging projects that would enable them to make full use of the deeper 30-mile channel. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the newly completed channel-dredging project, related terminal improvements, and what they all mean for crude oil exporting economics in Corpus Christi.
U.S. crude oil exports have been sliding the past few months, in part due to tariff-related upheavals in U.S. and international energy markets. According to RBN’s weekly Crude Voyager report, an average of 3.45 MMb/d were exported from Texas and Louisiana terminals in May, down from 3.87 MMb/d in January and the lowest monthly average since January 2023. Corpus Christi, the #1 port for sending out crude since 2020, has experienced a smaller (but still noteworthy) decline in crude export volumes; its May exports averaged 2.23 MMb/d (stacked bar to far right in Figure 1 below), down from 2.45 MMb/d in January and an average of 2.31 MMb/d in full-year 2024.
Monthly Crude Oil Exports Out of Corpus Christi/Ingleside. Source: Crude Voyager
As we’ve discussed in several blogs, there are at least a couple of reasons why Corpus Christi/Ingleside, with a 61% share of Gulf Coast crude oil exports in the first five months of 2025, has maintained a strong lead over the Houston area (with a 31% share), Beaumont/Nederland (6%) and Louisiana (2%). One is the ability of two Ingleside marine terminals — Enbridge Ingleside Energy Center (EIEC; light-blue bar sections in Figure 1 above) and Gibson Energy’s South Texas Gateway (STG; purple bar sections) — to partially load 2-MMbbl Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) at their docks before sending them out to the deeper waters of the Gulf for topping off via reverse lightering. (VLCCs are the transporters of choice for many shippers moving crude from the Gulf Coast to Asia and Europe because of the lower per-barrel cost.)
Corpus Christi/Ingleside’s role as the leading exporter also was made possible by the late-2019/early-2020 startup of three new crude oil pipelines from the Permian (Cactus II, Gray Oak and EPIC Crude) and the mid-2020 commercialization of STG. In May, EIEC and STG alone accounted for more than three-quarters (77%) of crude exports out of the Corpus Christi/Ingleside area and nearly half (49%) of total crude exports from Gulf Coast ports.
The Corpus Christi Channel Improvement Project (the formal name of the long-running effort) got its start way back in 1990 — years before the Shale Revolution began — when Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of deepening the channel to 54 feet. (Dredging contractors had just finished deepening the channel to 47 feet.) Work on the latest project commenced in 2019. Two years ago this month, in Deeper and Deeper, we noted that the then-impending completion of the channel-deepening project’s Phase 2 (section of blue line bounded by green vertical lines to the east and west of green #2 circle in Figure 2 below) — along with improvements to docks, berths and berthing areas at EIEC and STG (orange and green terminal icons, respectively) — would allow the two terminals to load up to 1.6 MMbbl into VLCCs at selected docks (up from the old 1.2-MMbbl limit), further reducing the volumes that need to be reverse-lightered.
Corpus Christi Ship Channel and Crude Export Terminals
Since then, dredging contractors have completed Phase 3 (#3 section in map) and — as of early June — Phase 4 of the channel-deepening project (#4 section in map), the latter of which deepened the innermost portion of Corpus Christi’s Inner Harbor (all the way to the Viola Turning Basin at its western end) to 54 feet below “Mean Lower Low Water,” or MLLW. (For our purposes, MLLW is best described as the average minimal tidal depth likely to be encountered by maritime operators.)
In addition to deepening the channel from the near-shore Gulf to the western end of the Inner Harbor, the just-finished dredging project widened the ship channel to 530 feet (from 200 to 400 feet previously), with another 200 feet of “barge shelves” on either side of the main channel along much of its length. In essence, the smaller-depth barge shelves made these parts of the channel into four-lane thoroughfares, allowing the passage of VLCCs and 1-MMbbl Suezmaxes in the two deeper central lanes, while lower-draft barges are moved along the two shallower outside lanes.
The channel improvement — and the nearly open new Harbor Bridge over the eastern end of the Inner Harbor, which will eliminate any concerns about vertical clearance (once the old bridge is removed) — opens up a number of possibilities for the crude export terminals along the Inner Harbor. In all cases, however, it will be up to terminal owners along that stretch of the ship channel to make enhancements to their docks and berths to make those possibilities a reality.
So far, only one facility — Oil Dock 1 (pink terminal icon in Figure 3 below), which is owned by the Port of Corpus Christi (POCC) and used primarily by Sunoco — has been upgraded to take full advantage of the new 54-foot channel depth. Before the dock’s berth was deepened to 54 feet, only 860 Mbbl of crude oil could be loaded onto a Suezmax at Oil Dock 1; now, that class of supertanker can be loaded to its full capacity of 1 MMbbl. POCC has indicated it is considering similar improvements to its Oil Dock 14 (purple terminal icon), which is under long-term contract to the Pin Oak Corpus Christi terminal just across the Inner Harbor. And Valero Energy had hinted that it may make dock and berth improvements at its 370-Mb/d refinery along the harbor — in this case, to enable larger, fully loaded tankers to deliver imported crude to the terminal.
Crude Oil Terminals and Refineries Along the Inner Harbor
We should note that Enbridge and Gibson have already made dock, berth and berthing-area improvements to their EIEC and STG terminals in Ingleside — remember that Phase 2 of the ship channel dredging project, which deepened the channel to Ingleside (and beyond), was completed in July 2023. At EIEC, Enbridge has two docks that can load up to 1.6 MMbbl onto VLCCs as well as three other docks that can load Suezmaxes and 700-Mbbl Aframax-class tankers — two of the smaller docks were purchased from Flint Hills Resources last October. STG, in turn, has two docks/berths, each of which were recently improved to allow VLCCs to be loaded with up to 1.6 MMbbl. The STG docks can also load Suezmaxes and Aframaxes.
There’s one more thing to discuss now that the Corpus Christi Channel Improvement Project is finished — namely, what’s next? (Keep in mind, it took 35 years to plan, finance and execute the dredging project — major infrastructure projects like this take time!)
For one thing, while dredging the Inner Harbor to 54 feet presents opportunities for crude export terminals there to send out fully loaded Suezmax- and Aframax-class tankers, they still won’t be able to handle VLCCs. One option the POCC is studying would create a turning basin just outside the Inner Harbor (red-shaded area to far right in Figure 3; no specific location has been selected) that would allow VLCCs to turn around and then back into the harbor — like more and more people are doing with their cars and pickups at the supermarket and the mall. Another would be to deepen at least the six-mile Phase 1 portion of the recently completed dredging project (#1 section in Figure 2) to 75 feet — enough to enable VLCCs to be fully loaded at a terminal that could potentially be built on Harbor Island near Aransas Pass. That project would cost at least several hundred million dollars, however, and it may be hard to justify, given the increasingly favorable economics of loading 1.6 MMbbl onto a VLCC in Ingleside and topping it off with a single reverse lightering in the Gulf.
“Rolling in the Deep” was written by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth and appears as the first song on Adele’s second studio album, 21. Released as the first single from the LP in December 2010, it went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and has been certified 8X Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The lyrics tell a tale of a scorned love, and it became one of the best-selling digital singles of all time. The video for the song won Best Editing, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Personnel on the record were: Adele Adkins (lead vocals), Paul Epworth (guitar, bass, percussion, backing vocals), Ray Carless (tenor sax), Neal Cowley (piano), Noel Langley (trumpet) and Lee Taylor (drums).
21 was recorded between May 2009 and October 2010 at AIR, Angel, Eastcote, Metropolis, MyAudioTonic, Sphere, and Workhorse in London; Harmony and Serenity Sound in Hollywood; Patriot in Denver; and Shangri-La in Malibu. Produced by Adele Adkins, Jim Abbiss, Paul Epworth, Rick Rubin, Fraser T. Smith, Ryan Tedder and Dan Wilson, the album was released in January 2011 and went to #1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. It has been certified 14X Platinum by the RIAA. Five singles were released from the LP.
Adele (Adele Adkins) is a British singer and songwriter. Her debut album, 19, was released in January 2008. It sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and received four Grammy Award nominations. She has released four studio albums, one live album, two EPs and 17 singles and has sold over 120 million records worldwide. She has won 16 Grammy Awards, 12 Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. In July 2024, Adele announced that she would be taking an indefinite break from music, with no plans for a new album at that time.
