Houston channel importance swelled as oil, gas exports rose
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Houston-Channel-s-Importance-Has-Swelled-as-Crude-13719862.phpMarch 27, 2019
On a normal day, 42 tankers, 19 freighters, 391 barges, 128 ferries and 2 cruise ships will move through the Houston Ship Channel. On any given day, one of those tankers may be as long as 1,500 feet.
The last week, though, has been anything but normal.
The second busiest U.S. port by tonnage was closed for three days by a cloud of cancer-causing benzene and toxic runoff that’s settled on the water from nearby chemical fires. It’s not the first time the channel has closed. Fog and hurricanes have shut it in the past. But the channel’s significance has grown almost daily as drillers in the shale fields of Texas have made the region one of the world’s fastest growing exporters of oil, gasoline and diesel.
In the past few days, about 60 ocean-going ships were unable to move either into or out of the region’s most important business artery, supporting roughly 12 percent of the nation’s refining capacity. But it’s not only the number of ships that makes the 1,000-foot-wide channel unique, or important. It’s also the size....
...Even in good times, navigating the waterway can be challenging. Pilots passing one another perform a maneuver called the “Texas chicken†which requires setting a near head-on course, then swinging their bows away from each other before using the cushion provided by the other ship’s wake to swing their sterns out and come back to the center of the channel--all while avoiding any barges in the outside lanes.
The maneuver requires a deft touch, as the giant ships displace huge quantities of water that can seriously affect handling....
