Plastics exports surging at Port of Houston
The Houston region has long discussed a boom in plastics exports. At the Port of Houston, the boom has arrived.
Exports of plastic resins, the tiny pellets used to make consumer and other plastics products, jumped 38 percent at the port in the first three months of the year, compared to the first three months of 2018. Exports of polyethylene, the world’s most common plastic, surged more than 60 percent during the same period.
“The big driver of this growth is the much-anticipated surge in resin exports,” Port Houston Executive Director Roger Guenther said in a news release. “It is here, and it is solid.”
The Houston area has been at the center of a petrochemical boom that has vastly expanded the region’s capacity to manufacture plastics. The flood of cheap natural gas, a chemical feedstock, from Texas shale plays has fueled the rapid growth in the petrochemical industry here.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips Chemical, Dow Chemical and others have completed multibillion-dollar petrochemical and plastics expansions in the Houston region in the past couple of year to meet the growing demand for plastics and consumer goods in China and other developing nations.
Roughly three-fourths of the nation’s waterborne polyethylene exports leave from the Port of Houston. The port has added a bevy of bigger and better container cranes at its Barbours Cut and Bayport terminals of late, the most recent additions costing about $11 million each. The nearly 300-foot-tall cranes can load an average of 35 containers an hour, reaching across ships that are 22 containers or nearly 180 feet wide.
At Bayport, for instance, polyethylene accounts for more than 15 percent of the cargo leaving the container terminal.
Port Houston operates, manages or leases eight public terminals, with more than 70 docks, where cargo such as containers and steel are unloaded. It’s also the local sponsor of the federally maintained Houston Ship Channel, meaning it helps with the management and environmental stewardship of the waterway.