Greater Houston Home to $15 Billion Worth of Projects Under Construction

The Greater Houston area in Texas covers 10,000 square miles, making it a hub of industrial activity. Industrial Info is tracking about $15 billion worth of industrial projects that are under construction in the Houston metropolitan area, with more than half of the spend attributed to the Chemical Processing, Power and Oil & Gas Production industries.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Project Database can click here for a full list of detailed project reports.

Greater Houston is home to Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller counties, but much of the chemical and oil and gas project activity is attributed to facilities along the Gulf Coast.

Among the chemical projects underway is Occidental Petroleum Corporation's (NYSE:OXY) (Houston, Texas) $1.1 billion conversion and expansion of its Battleground Chlor-Alkali Plant in La Porte. The project entails upgrading, modernizing and expanding equipment to increase the production of chlorine and caustic soda. Site preparation began in December 2023 and completion is expected in late 2027. Subscribers to the GMI Chemical Processing Database can read a detailed project report.

Meanwhile, Dow Incorporated's (NYSE:DOW) (Midland, Michigan) addition of a seventh polyethylene unit at its Plant B in Freeport is expected to wrap up in mid-2026. The unit is designed to produce an estimated 600,000 tons per year of polyethylene. Click here to read the project report.

The Oil & Gas Production activity is buoyed by the addition of two natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionators in Mont Belvieu, about 30 miles east of Houston on the Gulf Coast. Mont Belvieu is a hub for the storage, processing and distribution of NGLs.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P.’s (NYSE:EPD) (Houston) Train 14 at its 1.37 million-barrel-per day (BBL/d) fractionation and storage complex will provide an additional 200,000 BBL/d of capacity. The project is expected to wrap up in third-quarter 2025.

Targa Resources Corporation (NYSE:TRGP) (Houston) last month began adding an 11th train at its 940,000-BBL/d fractionator, to produce more than 100,000 BBL/d of high-purity butane, propane and ethane for a total NGL capacity of 1,180,000 BBL/d. Commissioning is expected in third-quarter 2026. Subscribers to the Oil & Gas Production Project Database can read more information on the Train 14 and Train 11 projects.

In other industries, Greater Houston’s power projects are highlighted by the addition of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and solar-generation capacity, although Industrial Info is tracking most of the BESS projects with a completion date around the end of 2024.

In terms of solar projects, in Waller County, EnCap Investments' (Houston) $650 million Parliament photovoltaic project is being built on a 3,400-acre site and will provide approximately 640 megawatts (MW) of generation when completed in 2026. In Fort Bend County, M.A. Mortenson Company (Minneapolis, Minnesota) is providing engineering, procurement and construction services for Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ (Copenhagen, Denmark) Fighting Jays solar farm--which is designed to provide up to 350 MW of power at full output utilizing 1 million panels. The project is expected to wrap up in early 2025. Subscribers can read more information on the Parliament and Fighting Jays projects.

For more information on solar and BESS projects in the Greater Houston area, see May 24, 2024, article - Acciona Energia Completes One of $3.8 Billion Worth of Solar, BESS Projects Underway in Greater Houston.

Another industry with more than $1 billion worth of investment is Pharmaceutical-Biotech. This includes two new buildings at the operational TMC3 collaborative research hub in Houston’s medical center, also known as the Texas Medical Center (TMC). TMC3 will house synergistic research initiatives for four institutions: MD Anderson, the Texas A&M University Health Science Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the TMC.

Both the Texas A&M University Health Science Center and University of Texas Health Science Center are adding a research building at TMC3, and both projects are expected to wrap up by the end of 2025. Subscribers to the GMI Pharmaceutical & Biotech Project Database can click here for the related project reports.

Subscribers to the GMI Project Database can click here for a full list of detailed reports for projects mentioned in this article, and click here for a full list of related plant profiles.