Employment and Expansion at Oklahoma’s Port of Catoosa is Promising

• Joe Wertz
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  Joe Wertz was a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2011-2019. He reported on energy and environment issues for national NPR audiences and other national outlets. He previously worked as a managing editor, assistant editor and staff reporter at several major Oklahoma newspapers and studied journalism at the University of Central Oklahoma.

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The Port of Catoosa links Oklahoma to major Mississippi River shipping lanes via the Verdigris and Arkansas Rivers.

Positive economic signs are coming from Tulsa’s Port of Catoosa, an important shipping hub that connects Oklahoma to the Mississippi River via an inland waterway.

Combined employment from businesses there has increased 68 percent since the worst of the recession three years ago, the Journal Record‘s D. Ray Tuttle reports:

Companies in the energy and agriculture sectors are hiring, which drives up the port’s employment figures, port director Bob Portiss tells the paper.

Activity at shipping hubs like the Port of Catoosa is often used as a marker to measure economic conditions.

About 3,700 employees worked there in June, up from 2,200 in mid-2010, the Journal reports. Construction at the port — Oklahoma’s largest — is ongoing, and the U.S. Department of Transportation in June approved a $6.4 million grant to help fund a $12 million project that will double the capacity of the main dock, add a new crane, and upgrade the capacity of an existing crane.