Local 2News report that refineries in area may have to cut back production due to water shortages in area in 2 months
Corpus Christi’s crucial refineries look for alternate water supplies amid looming water crisis
The city earlier this week said it could enter a water emergency in as soon as two months; at that point the city would have roughly six months before supply could no longer meet demand.
With gasoline prices rising amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, water limitations in the Coastal Bend — a growing fuel and chemical hub — could further drive up prices, industry officials said.
“If water limits force changes, facilities might have to slow production, take units offline or run at lower rates,” said Ed Longanecker, president of the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, an oil and natural gas industry trade group. “That would hit local jobs, reduce economic activity and cut into revenue that flows through the Port of Corpus Christi, which is one of the country’s leading crude oil export points.”
Industries that require large consumption of water for production purposes should invest in desalination processing. Refineries are the ideal facilities to convert salt water into potable water for operational requirements.
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Duce630
(DustinK - Damn it feels good to be a Cougar. -Dwight Davis)
5
Corpus Christi has a major water crisis going on. They have been looking at drilling wells, desalination, and I guess whatever other options there are. I haven’t been following it, I’ve seen the headlines and skimmed a few articles though.
They were pretty far down the road of starting a desalination plant but pulled the plug last year because of skyrocketing cost estimates and some other issues. But even if that had moved forward, they would still be in the same spot right now.
The failure to pursue desalination plants with more urgency is a major failure, but I’m not sure it’s feasible to put that cost burden on municipalities. The state should have taken the lead on this years ago, imo.
Corporate greed is also a major issue. ExxonMobil/Aramco, whose new plastics plant would utilize more water than the other users combined, doesn’t want to pay for a desalination plant. City of Corpus has water for its citizens, but not enough for corporate users as well. That’s the real issue.
State and corporations are trying to force City of Corpus to pay for desalination plant. The plants should have paid for this themselves.
In the other thread on data centers, the point was made that counties don’t
have the tools to control business growth. If true for the counties, probably true for
the city as well. So I’d see it as mostly a state issue on not allowing local
governments having such power. If the power truly resides with the state, then
it seems it’s mostly a state government failure. Now recent state legislation did start to address the states water issues; but it seems it’s late on action.
From what I read, there were significant issues with the proposal itself, and the contractor was not really working to rectify them. When the plant was proposed, the cost was estimated at $220MM. Post-COVID price increases and some design changes drove the cost to $757MM when the contract was awarded in 2024. By the summer of 2025, the cost had increased to $1.2 billion. With no cost certainty other than inflation, the city opted to pull the plug rather than continue with a contractor who wouldn’t guarantee a price. I don’t think the environmental concerns were part of the cancellation decision.
But regardless of what you’ll see in the news about how this is all caused by city mismanagement, their decision to cancel the contract in September of 2025 has zero to do with the current emergency. Their failure was in not securing back-up alternatives while the desalination plan progressed, and also relying on the “it’s gonna rain again soon” hope instead of planning. And I don’t know to what level they’ve instituted water use restrictions, but it doesn’t sound like they have been very aggressive.
They’re now progressing with a new contractor and can use their existing permits and other agreements that were in place for the canceled proposal. They’ll probably go spend a couple billion dollars only to have flooding rains fill up the reservoirs next month.
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92010Coogs
(I took a lie detector test...No I did not)
15
Israel has tons of desal plants. Your comment is right on. Indeed this is what happens when poor, uneducated government is at the helm. It took decades for the city of Carlsbad, California to get a desal plant…Yes decades.
That’s a pretty steep increase. As with new businesses that need much electricity,
I think the new businesses should be required to provide their own desalination water as well. Days of drilling and draining aquifers as you please has to be stopped or controlled better.
Not exactly. If you get your info from the Chron, take it with a grain of salt. Thomlinson is a notorious anti-O&G writer
In March 2017, then-city manager Margie Rose sent a letter to ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private oil company, that said, “because the City aggressively protects water resources for the future by implementing a matrix of supply strategies, we feel that we have sufficient water supplies to meet your needs.”
I don’t know all of the details behind what caused the delays and cost increases, and it seems like the contractor didn’t offer much illumination. For all I know, the city might have made the right call in canceling what could have turned out to be a disastrous financial deal.
As far as bearing the cost, I think there’s some middle ground to be explored. Just like it’s unreasonable to expect a city and its residents to bear the cost, I don’t think the businesses should necessarily have to pay for the whole thing, either.
The problem we’re having across the state is that water supply and infrastructure is managed in a wholly inefficient manner. To some extent, it needs to be treated similarly to electricity with projects and resources pooled, rather than leaving it to haphazard local projects.
92010Coogs
(I took a lie detector test...No I did not)
20
Corpus failed to plan. This is not new news from reading the reports. Could they have push for a half cent tax to pay for it? That is on them. The water shortage is a Nationwide issue due to terrible planning from the elected leaders. California is a prime example for not having adequate storage tanks. When torrential rain comes down 99% of it ends up in the ocean. Bills are passed to build new tanks but they are…not built. Where is that money going? Texas has torrential rain much more frequently. What is it going to take to build an infrastructure that will be effective? The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans built aqueducts still in use today.
