On May 26, the oil tanker Anne docked safely at the Oxy Ingleside Energy Center export terminal. The tanker is owned by the Belgium-based Euronav and belongs to the Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) class of oil tankers. The Anne is over three football fields long and sits six stories high over the waterline.

The Anne is the largest oil tanker to ever call on the Port Corpus Christi or any other Gulf of Mexico Port. A VLCC can hold over 2 million barrels of oil, but it was not loaded on this trip as it was only a testing and planning operation for Occidental Petroleum Corporation and port officials.

The very first export of crude oil in forty years sailed out of the port when oil export restrictions in the U.S. were lifted in 2015. Since then, Port Corpus Christi has remained the number one U.S. exporter of crude. The port also has the record for the single, largest vessel load set in April 2017, with 930,000 barrels of crude loaded onto the Suezmax class tanker Cap Romuald.

Port Corpus Christi is currently in the middle of being approved for a 10-year expansion project. The main focus of the billion-dollar Capital Investment program is the widening and deepening of the ship channel. The aging Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge will also be replaced by what will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere, which will increase the air draft clearance up to 205 feet. The new bridge is tentatively scheduled for completion in 2020.

The Chairman of the Port of Corpus Christi Commission, Charles W. Zahn, said in a statement, [read more]