Since last summer, the Corpus Christi area has emerged as the U.S.’s leading crude export venue. In the first five and a half months of 2020, it accounted for an astounding 45% of the barrels being shipped abroad — astounding because in the same period last year, the Corpus area held less than a 20% share. What is sometimes forgotten, though, is that little Ingleside, TX, located across Corpus Christi Bay from Corpus proper, is the area’s crude-export leader, with the Moda Midstream and Flint Hills Resources terminals responsible for just over half of Greater Corpus’s total export volumes. And, with the new South Texas Gateway Terminal nearing completion, Ingleside’s role will only increase in the coming months. Today, we conclude a series on Gulf Coast export terminals with a look at what has been going on in Ingleside.
In the first eight months of last year, the Corpus Christi area ranked third among its Gulf Coast brethren in crude oil export volumes — Houston was consistently #1 then, and Beaumont was the regular runner-up. Since September 2019, though, Corpus has been out front, often by a wide margin, and there’s good reason to believe it will stay ahead of the pack, at least for a while. What’s driving the South Texas port’s export-volume growth? First, there are three big new pipelines now moving crude from the Permian to Corpus: Cactus II, EPIC Crude and Gray Oak. Second, Corpus Christi and nearby Ingleside, TX, have a lot of existing storage and marine-dock capacity, and more is being developed. Today, we continue our review of crude export facilities with a look at three terminals along Corpus’s Inner Harbor.
The new, large-diameter crude oil pipelines coming online between the Permian Basin and the Gulf Coast grab all the headlines. They wouldn’t be nearly as valuable to producers, however, if it weren’t for a number of other, smaller projects being developed in West Texas to transport large volumes of crude from major gathering systems and storage hubs to these new takeaway pipelines. A case in point is Lotus Midstream’s recently unveiled Augustus Pipeline project, which will use a combination of new and existing pipe to initially transport up to 150 Mb/d of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), West Texas Light (WTL) and West Texas Sour (WTS) from Midland to Crane. When Augustus starts flowing late this year, crude delivered to the Crane hub could flow into the Longhorn Pipeline to Houston, or maybe the EPIC Crude or Gray Oak pipelines to Corpus Christi. Today, we discuss Lotus’s planned Midland-to-Crane project, and its significance for Midland Basin producers and the pipe’s owner/developer.
