Second, said Mr. Strawbridge, Texas drilling rigs are shutting down, oil and gas production is diving, and industrial developers are nervous. “It’s a different time,” he said. “We fully anticipate a production slowdown. We’ve employed significant austerity measures.”

Relieving some of the pressure, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil-producing nations agreed to slash oil production in May and June, a move that is expected to add stability to the market.

“It certainly brings more discipline to the producers, including U.S. shale producers which will organically cut three to four million barrels per day in U.S. production,” Mr. Strawbridge said. “That will have a dampening effect in our export volumes for some period of time.”

Mr. Strawbridge and his colleagues were enthusiastic about the $2.5 billion, 650-mile Red Oak pipeline, announced last year by Phillips 66 and Plains All American Pipeline, to transport 400,000 barrels of oil from Oklahoma to Corpus Christi. But Phillips suspended the project in March.

The Red Oak project, the fifth and latest pipeline to transport oil from production fields in Texas and the West, was meant to help the port triple its oil export capacity to more than five million barrels a day by the mid 2020s.

A year ago, the demand for oil export capacity in Corpus Christi was predicted to climb to 2.5 million barrels a day by mid-2021 and account for 56 percent of all U.S. petroleum exports, according to Wood Mackenzie, a research and consulting firm. But in April, oil exports from Corpus Christi started marching in the opposite direction, falling to 1.3 million barrels daily from 1.8 million in January.

Along the port’s ship channel, delays, suspensions and project cancellations are apparent. A plan to build a new oil export terminal on 55 acres in the port collapsed. Two years ago, the port signed a lease agreement with Pin Oak Terminals, a private company, to build the facility. The company terminated its lease in March.