Multidisciplinary Grant-Funded Barge Dock Expansion within a Busy Operating Public Oil Terminal

The Port of Corpus Christi Authority (POCCA) is the USA’s largest revenue tonnage and crude oil export port. To maintain its strategic position, planned maintenance and/or regular upgrades of infrastructure of its existing operating terminals are an important consideration for the Port and associated stakeholders. To achieve this, the Port embarked upon redeveloping the Port’s most productive, busy, and operating public oil terminal at Avery Point. The terminal consists of three ship docks and one fit-for-purpose two-berth barge dock located along the southern coastline of the Inner Harbor Navigation Channel. The Port concluded that doubling the capacity of the approximately 30-year-old barge dock from two berths to four berths as the first phase of redevelopment is the most prudent approach. Expanding the barge dock first creates additional capacity at the three ship docks, which would allow the Port to redevelop each ship dock one at a time in the future. The execution of the barge dock expansion, which is the subject of this paper, was grant-funded via the USDOT MARAD PIDP program.