Lone Star State ports setting records, enhancing diverse cargo infrastructure

With record cargo volumes seemingly becoming commonplace, ports throughout Texas are assertively forging ahead with a multitude of infrastructure enhancements to handle even more activity in the future.

Recent developments include not only expansions of on-terminal capabilities but also, in a number of cases, the advancement of deeper, wider ship channels.

Beginning with Port Houston, the longtime No. 1 U.S. foreign tonnage port, then heading east to the Sabine-Neches Waterway facilities of Port Arthur and Beaumont before taking a southwestward jaunt along the Texas Gulf Coast to just north of the Mexico border, here’s the latest going on at key ports of the Lone Star State:

Port Houston

Marking a fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth in containerized cargo volume, Port Houston handled a record 2,987,291 twenty-foot-equivalent units in 2019 while adding three new container services and two general cargo liner services. Loaded container exports, buoyed by shipments of polyethylene resins, led the way with a 17 percent year-over-year increase.

Overall tonnage moving through Port Houston public facilities also reached an all-time high last year, rising 5 percent over the preceding 12-month period, to 37.8 million tons. More than 4 million tons of that was steel moving through multipurpose facilities.

The No. 1 infrastructure priority for Port Houston is the Houston Ship Channel expansion, known as Project 11, with the completed feasibility study having been forwarded to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers headquarters for a chief’s report. Port officials continue to engage weekly with industry stakeholders to maintain a coordinated effort for approval, advocacy and financing for expedited construction of the deepening and widening.

Port Houston awarded $179 million in contracts for facility investments in 2019, including for projects to enhance wharves, fenders, access gates, pavement, rail and drainage. Last year saw Port Houston complete procurement of 17 rubber-tired gantries and three ship-to-shore cranes, while three additional ship-to-shore cranes were commissioned at the Bayport Container Terminal, where the port is adding 73 acres of container yard and initiating construction of a rail spur. Intermodal expansion at Bayport is getting a $21.84 million boost from a Port Infrastructure Development Program grant announced in February by the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Also, the port is breaking ground on a new entry gate facility at the venerable Barbours Cut Container Terminal, and a major upgrade of the port’s Navis terminal operating system has been completed.