CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It seemed that before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a new huge company announcing plans to build billion-dollar facilities here in town on a regular basis.
Then, it all stopped, according to President and CEO of the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corporation Mike Culbertson.
"Before COVID, we had like $12 billion worth of projects that we were chasing right before COVID," Culbertson said. "And by the time it came out of COVID, two years later, we had none. They had all gone away, and they hadn't gone somewhere else, they just went away."
3NEWS asked local officials why those development deals still haven’t been brought back to town, especially in light of all the excitement over hydrogen and carbon capture.
Culbertson said the IRS and the Department of Energy are coming up with rules for those industries on things like tax credits.
"We have about $9 billion in projects that we're looking at and $7 billion is hydrogen," he said. "So, the final rules will be published in the next couple of months and we'll go forward with that."
Culbertson added that he believes early next year one of those projects he’s looking to bring here will be breaking ground on a $2 billion facility.
Meanwhile, the city’s water supply is something that economic development officials say is a concern for companies looking to come here.
3NEWS asked Corpus Christi Water COO Drew Molly about whether the City could supply a large amount of water to a company who came in asking for something like 20-million gallons of water a day.
"I would say those would be kind of some, some fairly challenging conversations because we are not going to over commit our system to a future water user and then find ourselves having to, you know, really, work hard to find that next water supply," Molly said.
He added that the City does have some water it could sell to someone before 2028 when the desal plant goes online, but he cautioned the City wants to be very careful right now about the water we have because after all we are under drought restrictions.
Culbertson added that the projects coming to town all use about 300,000 gallons of water a day. He also says the EDC is also going after manufacturers that don't use a lot of water.