Page 21: of Marine News Magazine (May 2026)

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Ports

Port of Corpus Christi

Drive into Corpus Christi and you can feel the paradox that de? nes CHRISTI many port cities: the waterfront is everywhere, yet the maritime business that powers the place is easy to miss — until you look past the horizon of tanks, docks, and ship traf? c and realize you’re staring at one of the world’s most consequential energy gateways.

y volume, the Port of Corpus Christi has be- come a central export valve for U.S. crude oil and a fast-rising platform for LNG—an in- dustrial ecosystem that has grown at a pace few ports can match. In 2025, the Port and its

B customers moved 203.4 million tons through the Corpus

Christi Ship Channel, a 1.5% decline from 2024’s 206.5 million tons, as crude volumes softened modestly even while LNG continued to climb.

And in the background—quietly shaping everything from vessel size to berth productivity—Corpus Christi completed the kind of infrastructure program that changes a port’s trajectory for decades: the Corpus Christi Ship

Channel Improvement Project, deepening the channel from 47 feet to 54 feet (MLLW) and widening it from 400

G ENERGY feet to 530 feet, with additional barge shelves built in for safety and operational ? uidity.

For Kent Britton, CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi, the growth is real—but so is the responsibility that comes

K FOR THE with being a key node in the energy supply chain.

“People sometimes don’t understand maritime even in port cities,” Britton told me. “So I try to do the same thing in one little speech after another.”

EXPORTS

From Industrial Customer to Port CEO

Britton didn’t grow up through the traditional port au- thority ranks. Nine years ago, he wasn’t “in the port space” at all. His background runs through large industrial manu- facturers—Glencore and Alcoa — followed by a move to www.marinelink.com MN 21|