Container volumes at Houston set to rise on new petrochemical plant demand

23-Feb-16

The Port of Houston is gearing up to handle a quantum leap in containerized exports of plastic resins that will be produced at the petrochemical plants due to come on line in the next three or four years, as per ihs.com. By 2020, six plants will turn cheap natural gas into exports of polyethylene equal to 20% of all the containers handled by the port last year, when it posted double-digit growth. “We had an extraordinary year last year, surpassing 2 mln 20-foot-equivalent units for the first time in our history,” Roger Guenther, executive director of the Port of Houston Authority, told JOC.com. Throughput increased 12% year-over-year, to 2.1 mln TEUs. Of this total, exports made up 53% and imports 47%. Houston already controls 67 percent of all containerized shipments handled by U.S. Gulf ports and expects that share to grow after the Panama Canal’s new locks open in May or June. Last year’s growth was generated in part by the diversion of retail imports from Asia from the West Coast, where labor slowdowns caused massive delays, and in part by organic growth in imports and exports. Guenther expects growth this year will slow to the 2 to 3 percent range, which, coming on top of last year’s surge, will push throughput to another record. A joint venture between INEOS and Sasol opens a new polyethylene plant in LaPorte, Texas, in Q4-2016. Over the next few years, five more plants being built in Texas by Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips 66, Dow Chemical, Formosa Plastics and Lyondell Basell will open. By 2020, the additional exports from these plants could run as high as 540,000 TEUs a year. To handle growth on this scale, the port plans to invest US$1.6 bln through 2021 to deepen and widen its channel and expand capacity at its Barbours Cut and Bayport container terminals. It already has replaced four cranes at Barbours Cut with new super-post-Panamax cranes and has three more on order that can reach across 22 containers and have 160 feet under the spreader, the largest in North America, as per Peter T. Leach, IHS