Six US energy companies requested from President Donald Trump to fund $60 million for deepening and widening of the Corpus Christi Channel, in order to meet the increasing oil and gas demand from the US.
Namely, the CEOs of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, NuStar Energy, Buckeye Partners, Howard Energy Partners, Plains All American Pipeline and Cheniere Energy asked Mr. Trump to include $60 million for this project in the US Fiscal Year 2019 Presidential Budget, in order to begin Federal participation in its construction.
Currently, the Port of Corpus Christi is US’s 4th largest seaport by tonnage and the largest export port for US produced crude oil and it’s about to become one of the largest exporters of LNG by 2020.
“The 2015 lifting of the U.S. crude oil export ban allowed our companies to invest nearly $50 billion in industrial projects underway in South Texas that rely on the Corpus Christi Ship Channel to move our products, creating tens of thousands of jobs and billions in additional economic output. Many of those new industrial projects include announced pipelines from Permian Basin to the Port of Corpus Christi designed to handle significant increases in U.S. oil and gas production, which will enhance U.S. energy dominance and our allies’ energy security well into the future,” the six companies said.
They continued bu adding that the Port of Corpus Christi can reduce the trade deficit, as while other US ports continue importing large amounts of cargo from countries like China, Corpus Christi Port exported more than $6 billion of crude oil to US trading partners.
“Funding this project is an opportunity to invest in a national transportation asset that would allow our U.S. companies and the port to significantly increase our export capacity and help solidify the U.S. as a world energy leader,” the letter concluded.
