Crude Oil Imports- Houston and Texas City

Crude oil imports for the week of Dec. 22-28 in the Ports of Houston and Texas City have been entering the ports without any problems. Over the past week there has been nearly a dozen supertankers from Africa and the Persian Gulf offloading their crude cargo offshore at the Galveston lightering area to shuttle Aframax tankers.

The only disruption from crude imports might be a slight delay in imports from oil terminals in the Bay of Campeche, where Dos Bocos, Cayo Arcas, and Pajaritos load crude oil onto Aframax tankers. Last week strong winds and high seas prevented the loading of tanker ships for approximately a day.


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Approximately 40 % 0f the imported crude in the Port of Houston is high sulfur Mexican Mayan crude and the Shell Deer Park refinery receives over half of all Mayan crude entering the port. Furthermore, nearly 20 % of the imported crude entering the Port of Texas City is Mexican Mayan crude.

From EIA data of October 2007, on the average 3.5 million barrels of Mexican crude entered these ports in a week, which is equivalent to 7 Aframax tanker ships. Crude oil analysts at VesselTrax through their vessel movement modeling analysis foresee a 1.5-2.0 million barrel deficit for the week which would be made up the following week .