The VLC Anne dwarfs any other vessel to ever pull up to a dock in the Coastal Bend. In fact, at 1,093 feet long and 200 feet across, the supertanker is the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico. The Anne can hold up to 2 million barrels of crude oil. Courtesy photo
The biggest ship to ever sail in the Gulf of Mexico pulled up to OxyChem’s Ingleside dock at about 9 a.m. Friday, May 26, where it will be loaded with 900,000 barrels of crude. An additional 300,000 will be loaded offshore. The ship, which is 1,093 feet long and nearly 200 feet wide, can carry 2 million barrels.
The visit is a test of whether the Ingleside dock can handle ships so big they can’t fit in the Corpus Christi channel fully loaded — at least not yet. Filled to capacity, the VLC Anne requires a depth of 66 feet to sail through. The Corpus Christi channel is only 45 feet deep, something the Port of Corpus Christi hopes to change sometime in the next five years while the new Harbor Bridge is being built.
The $350 million needed to dredge the channel to 52 feet has been approved by Congress twice but never put on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funding list. The port is spending $35 million to get the project started while waiting to move up the Corps’ priority list.
Transportation savings for dockside loading vs. offshore loading are significant. This trip by the VLC Anne will save 75 cents per barrel.
OxyChem (Occidental Petroleum) is the largest oil producer in the Permian Basin shale play, where production was expected to hit 2.4 million barrels a day by the end of May. The company recently has been moving 250,000 barrels a day of Permian crude out of the Ingleside port.
