Fracking Boom Strains Houston Ship Channel

Businessweek:

Much of the record U.S. growth in oil and gas output is transiting through Houston, the country’s largest export gateway and home to the greatest concentration of refineries and petrochemical plants in the U.S. An average day on the channel in 2013 saw 38 tankers, 22 freighters, a cruise ship, 345 towboats, 6 public vessels, 297 ferries, 25 other transits, and 75 ships in port, Coast Guard data show. “Sometimes you can meet and be overtaken by a handful of ships, 10 to 15 of them,” says Tim Gunn, a tugboat captain for Buffalo Marine Service who has navigated these waters for 13 years. “When I first started it seemed like two or three.”
At the turn of the 20th century, Houston was a provincial cotton-trading hub with only slightly more inhabitants than its coastal neighbor to the east, Galveston, home to the region’s deepwater port. Buffalo Bayou, less than 10 feet deep, was the only navigable waterway that spanned most of the distance between the two cities. After a hurricane battered Galveston in September 1900, U.S. Representative Thomas Ball successfully lobbied Congress to dredge the bayou and Galveston Bay to a depth of 25 feet. “At that time, Houston was still a small town,” says Janiece Longoria, chairman of the Port of Houston Authority. “Houston owes all its bounty to the ship channel.”
The resulting waterway is 4 miles longer than the Panama Canal. About 8 percent of U.S. refining capacity lines its shores. The area is also home to the biggest petrochemical complex in the country. A network of pipelines connects the facilities to oil fields throughout the Midwest and Texas and the storage depots at Cushing, Okla. Companies’ access to the waterway is so vital that the port authority estimates its closure would cost an estimated $330 million a day in lost commerce.
The big question looming over the channel is how well its century-old infrastructure will accommodate the $35 billion in new projects and expansions that energy and chemical companies plan through 2015. That estimate is drawn from a 2012 study by Greater Houston Port Bureau, which figures investments by ExxonMobil, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP), Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), and others will create 265,800 jobs.

I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that the Galveston hurricane, the Ship Channel and Spindletop and the resulting Texas oil boom made Houston, although NASA certainly helped.  All occurred within the first 15 years of the 20th century.  Houston's population grew from 44,000 in 1900 to 2.1 million in 2010 (with a population of 6.18 million in the metropolitan area).  It will be interesting to see how much infrastructure work will be done to ensure that the Ship Channel will continue to facilitate the region's growth.