Caribbean Port Gap at $530 Million as US LNG Boom Tests Atlantic Supply Chains

Caribbean Port Gap at $530 Million as US LNG Boom Tests Atlantic Supply Chains Rising US gas output and Hormuz-driven route diversification are lending new commercial weight to a decade-old infrastructure shortfall across Caribbean transshipment hubs. The Caribbean's port infrastructure deficit has carried a price tag of roughly $530 million since a 2016 Caribbean Development Bank study assessed what it would cost to modernise the regional network — explicitly excluding Jamaica and covering only the smaller hubs spread across the arc from Trinidad to the Bahamas. A decade on, that estimate is almost certainly a floor. The strategic weight of the gap, however, has risen considerably.⁴ Part of the reason is what happened in the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz closed on 4 March 2026, and the International Energy Agency described the resulting disruption as the largest supply shock in the history of the global oil market. Oil prices surged past $120 a barrel, QatarEnergy declared force majeure on all exports from the Gulf, and the scale of the event forced a real-time audit of which shipping corridors could absorb diverted volumes. Atlantic routes attracted renewed attention that they have not fully lost.³ An Atlantic Council report published on Sunday (2026-06-01) pressed the case for US investment in Caribbean port modernisation, arguing the economics justify the expenditure on strictly commercial grounds before any security calculus is applied. Modernising scanning technology and customs infrastructure delivers a dual return, the report said: it strengthens supply chain reliability and reduces the friction that currently undermines both port operations and broader governance systems across the region.⁴ The commercial logic connects directly to US gas export volumes. Marketed gas production in the Lower 48 averaged 117.2 billion cubic feet per day in the first quarter of 2026, according to the EIA, a 4% increase on the same period in 2025. The agency forecasts a further 3% rise for the full year, with most of the incremental volume coming from the Permian Basin, which is expected to average 29.2 billion cubic feet per day in 2026 — 6% above 2025 — and grow a further 10% in 2027 once current pipeline constraints ease in the latter half of this year.¹ Haynesville, the gas-dominant play that feeds Gulf Coast LNG terminals most directly, is forecast to grow 6% this year and 8% in 2027. More production means more export cargo, and Caribbean transshipment infrastructure sits squarely in the middle of US-to-Europe and US-to-Asia LNG trade lanes. Port-level delays, inspection backlogs and governance gaps in that corridor add friction that compounds across hundreds of voyages and affects voyage economics in ways that are invisible in aggregated trade data until something breaks.^1,4 The Atlantic Council's framing — that scanning equipment investment is a supply chain efficiency decision rather than a foreign assistance line item — reads as a deliberate attempt to reposition the debate in Washington. US federal agencies have historically treated Caribbean port modernisation as a development finance question. The report is arguing it should be treated as a logistics infrastructure question, funded accordingly and administered with commercial urgency.⁴ Separately, the UAE is moving quickly on its own alternative-route infrastructure. Sultan Al Jaber said on Wednesday (2026-05-21) that the pipeline designed to route crude around the Strait of Hormuz is roughly half complete and targeting delivery in 2027. That addresses the Gulf egress problem, but it does nothing for Atlantic corridor capacity — and the bottleneck the CDB study identified in 2016 has not been resolved in the years since.² The $530 million CDB figure has two gaps built into it. The study excluded Jamaica, which handles some of the Caribbean's higher-volume traffic, and it was priced in 2016 dollars against 2016 port specifications. Both factors push the real current cost higher. Whether the US government, multilateral development banks or private infrastructure funds move to close the gap — and on what timeline — remains unanswered. The Atlantic Council's report raises the question; it does not fund the answer.⁴ The signal to watch is whether US LNG project sponsors or Gulf Coast terminal operators begin factoring Caribbean port capacity explicitly into long-term shipping contracts. If they do, the $530 million estimate will get tested commercially before it gets tested politically.