Page 26: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 16, 2026)

cover feature

Port of Corpus Christi

Drive into Corpus Christi and you can feel the paradox that defines 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 traffic and realize you’re staring at one of the world’s most consequential energy gateways.

By Greg Trauthwein y volume, the Port of Corpus Christi has become a cen-

From Industrial Customer to Port CEO tral export valve for U.S. crude oil and a fast-rising

Britton didn’t grow up through the traditional port author- platform for LNG—an industrial ecosystem that has ity ranks. Nine years ago, he wasn’t “in the port space” at grown at a pace few ports can match. In 2025, the Port all. His background runs through large industrial manufactur-

Band its customers moved 203.4 million tons through ers—Glencore and Alcoa — followed by a move to Corpus the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, a 1.5% decline from 2024’s

Christi where he served as CFO at Sherwin Alumina, a plant 206.5 million tons, as crude volumes softened modestly even with deep roots in the region’s heavy industry.

while LNG continued to climb.

In other words: Britton arrived as a customer. He under-

And in the background—quietly shaping everything from stood how industrial operators think about costs, reliability, vessel size to berth productivity—Corpus Christi completed and throughput — how a few hours saved on a berth window the kind of infrastructure program that changes a port’s trajec- can ripple across a re