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A Chinese construction company and its investors – looking to boost import trade, primarily from the Panama Canal – want to build a $10 billion deepwater port just below west St. Mary Parish by 2015.
If approved, the port would be built on a man-made island near the mouth of the Atchafalaya River.
Parish President Paul Naquin and Economic Development Director Frank Fink traveled to China twice last year to meet with ranking members of China Communication & Construction, China Harbor Engineering and the China Ocean Shipping companies. The three companies are financially backing the port project.
China operates a similar port – the Yangshan Deep-water Port south of Shanghai – in Hangzhou Bay, a river basin very similar to the Atchafalaya River Basin, according to Lucien Cutrera of T. Baker Smith of Houma. The Chinese bay, much like the river basin, has seen sediment build-up create a number of deltas.
T. Baker Smith is managing the project locally.
According to Cutrera, cargo would be carried to and from the new port via inland container JOWI ships, self-propelled water crafts that would move trade up the Atchafalaya River past Morgan City to the Red River and points beyond. The shorter travel distance up the Atchafalaya to the Red River is half that of the current deepwater path up the Mississippi River, “certainly making this idea look very attractive,” Cutrera added.
“A precedent has been set,” Cutrera recently told the St. Mary Parish Council. The Panama Canal was also widened, which created an interest in additional container traffic in the United States.
“They came to us; we didn’t go to them,” Naquin said of the deal. “This client will generate the demand.
“This is a fundamentally different proposal. The Chinese will be doing the engineering, economic and environmental studies.”
The St. Mary-based port would handle approximately 5-million containers annually, Fink estimated.
“The Chinese ship about 25 million containers to the West Coast, mostly for further shipping to the interior of the United States,” he said. “That gets expensive. What we’re looking at here is taking about 5 million containers from that number.
“We also have highway and rail access – another plus.”
No railroad companies have been approached about expanding rail traffic to the port, Fink said. Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s east-west mainline, which crosses the Tri-parishes, would need to build a new track.
Containers shipping within a few hundred miles of the port would likely ship by truck in the meantime, Fink said.
“If this thing flies, you’re looking at 2,000 … to 5,000 jobs,” the parish president said.
“It’s still a long way off,” Naquin added. “The Chinese are saying it could be in operation by 2015, but I told them this is not going to be cheap.”
The project is not without its hurdles, however. Cutrera said it will be difficult to keep the 20-mile channel dredged at 50 feet.
“We know we can build in 20 feet of water,” he said. “But whether we can dredge and maintain a channel at a cost that’s equal to the benefits is the Achilles heel.”
Dredge materials would be used along south Louisiana’s disappearing coastline, an added boon for the Tri-parishes, Naquin noted.
Eugene Ji, CEO of G2 USA, initially approached Naquin and Fink about the project.
“I have lived in Louisiana for 25 years,” Ji said. “I love the people here.”
“My goal is this: What can I do to help export more products from Louisiana – natural gas, seafood, you name it. And I think St. Mary Parish will provide a good location for this idea,” he said.
“The project in China at Yangshan … is very real. It is not a dream.”
The Port of West St. Mary currently in operation near Franklin provides access to the U.S. Gulf Intracoastal Waterway via a channel 13 feet deep – almost one-fifth the depth of the proposed port. General cargo is handled from the dock, and mobile cranes and fork-loaders transfer loads between warehouses and vessels.
Three Chinese companies are proposing building a deepwater port in Morgan City near the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. The project would be fashioned after a similar man-made island in Hangzhou Bay, near Shanghai.
