BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Things are full steam ahead at the Port of Brownsville today and there a lot more things to come for the entire Rio Grande Valley.
A huge multibillion project is in the works and it will take the region another dimension once completed.
Yes, it’s billions with a B and there are quite a few of them.
“This is an $11.4 billion investment,” Ed Campirano, the port’s director, said recently at a meeting of the South Texas Manufacturers Association. “How often the Valley has even been in a discussion of this nature. Never?”
He said the project is expected to create and sustain more than 6,000 construction local jobs over a period.
Keeping such development is going to be something hard to be kept under wraps, he continued.
“This is going to hit us all,” Campirano said. “We can’t wait for this and I am sure a lot of people in this room can’t wait either.”
The port director was referring to liquefied natural gas export terminal that NextDecade is developing on a 984-acre site at the port and which will produce 27 million metric tons of low carbon intensive LNG.
According a company release, the LNG is for exports to markets all over the world and the amount of energy produced will be enough to meet the annual heating requirements of some 20 million households.
It will be largest privately funded infrastructure project in the Lone Star State, the company said.
It will also be the first and only project offering CO2 emissions reduction of more than 90 percent via planned carbon capture and storage – capturing and permanently storing more than 5 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to removing more than one million vehicles from the road annually, it further states.
Campirano called the project the first of its kind to happen in the region.
Some time back, a $1.8 million pipeline crossing project to transport gas from Agua Dulce to the port destined for Mexico took place and it was completed without much fanfare, Campirano said.
Speaking of the impact the project will have here, Campirano compared it to the way Eagle Ford transformed the Port of Christi in a way not seen before.
Millions and millions of dollars worth of economic activity occurred at the port, resulting in an economic bonanza for the area as scores of other foreign and national companies began investing there.
They include M&G Resins USA of Italy, Voestalpin of Austria, Tianjjn Pip of China and Cheniere Energy Inc. of Houston, among others.
“We are going to bypass that,” Campirano said, as compared the likely impact of NextDecade against Eagle Ford’s impact in Nueces County. “We are going straight to the global market – the energy market. This is all for exports.”
Editor’s Note: Audio editor Mario Muñoz has lifted an excerpt from Eddie Campirano’s presentation to the South Texas Manufacturers Association. The excerpt has some of Campirano’s remarks about a ship channel deepening project at the port, along with full details on NextDecade’s LNG project.
Audio
Editor’s Note: Click here to read a related story about new projects happening at the Port of Brownsville.
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