Brownsville refinery locks in key contracts, shifting project from planning to execution

Dallas-based America First Refining has lined up several key contracts to advance the 164,300-barrel-per-day oil refinery at the Port of Brownsville. 

After more than a decade in development, the America First Refining project already has most of its permits, including air permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is empowered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to handle federal permitting processes. 

The hydrogen-powered oil refinery is expected to cost between $3 billion and $4 billion to build. 

Irving-based Fluor Corporation was tapped by America First Refining for the front-end engineering and design work for the new oil refinery, the companies announced on Tuesday. The project will “leverage commercially proven technologies to cleanly and efficiently process American shale oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel,” according to Fluor Corporation. 

The value of the deal was not publicly disclosed. Fluor Corporation is expected to release that information to investors during its first quarter 2026 results in the coming months.

“Together [America First Refining] and Fluor bring deep technical expertise and proven project-delivery capabilities, positioning the project for successful execution. This collaboration reflects both companies’ commitment to advancing the nation’s refining infrastructure,” Pierre Bechelany, Fluor’s business group president of energy solutions, said in a news release. 

New York City-based investment brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald is the financial advisor for America First Refining for its strategic capital and offtake agreements.  

Paris, France-based Axens, a technology company with a focus on refineries and the petrochemical industry, has the technology licensor contract with America First Refining for its Brownsville project. 

Axens is expected to provide refining technologies with a focus on clean processing, including reduced energy consumption.

America First Refining has held a 240-acre lease at the Port of Brownsville on the south side of the ship channel for years, and the company has already done some site preparation and pre-construction on the land. 

McDermott was the general contractor for front-end engineering and design services for a previous rendition of the oil refinery, records show. 

Its 650-mile-long crude oil pipeline from the Permian Basin has yet to be built and would require landowner deals across Texas. 

Neither America First Refining nor its customer, Reliance Industries — a publicly traded multinational in India — confirmed a 20-year contract, but President Donald Trump touted the deal, naming Reliance as the customer. The deal is for 1.2 billion barrels of light shale oil worth $125 billion. The refinery is expected to produce 50 billion gallons of refined oil products over a 20-year period, worth $175 billion. 

The overall value of the project is $300 billion, which would increase American exports and reduce the trade imbalance, something the Trump administration has pursued over the past year through a tariff war. 

America First Refining CEO John Calce is also an executive with Centurion Terminals, ARX Energy, Jupiter Brownsville, and Element Fuels Holdings — all of which previously pitched a Port of Brownsville project dating back to 2015. Previous plans included exports of U.S. shale oil to Mexico, upwards of 100,000 barrels of gasoline each day. 

America First Refining did not respond to a request for comment, but a top company executive outlined his plans on a recent Texas oil and gas industry podcast. 

“It’s been me and some private partners that got this thing from conception to here. This is all private money,” said John Calce, CEO of America First Refining, on the Texas-based David Blackmon podcast The Energy Question. “What’s made this project financially possible was, candidly, President Trump’s focus on investment in America. That really changed the tone and tenor of how people overseas looked at the opportunity to invest in the U.S. We’ve got a great partner in the folks at Reliance…on the technical side and they’re going to buy a little bit of product from us.” 

Calce added that the Trump administration was influential during the dealmaking process, introducing his team to overseas partners, like Reliance. 

The next step is construction, he said. 

“We’re finishing up our engineering work and we’ll start on construction. We’ve already done a lot of the civil kind of prep so we haven’t been sitting on our hands,” he said. 

Calce said the refinery will be built with 80,000-ton modules about 100 feet wide and 300 feet long that will be imported. 

“They come in on a boat, then they roll them off, they snap into place. We’ll have an army of welders down there working. Our tank farm of course, will be built on site, but we anticipate having all that happen by the end of 2028,” he said. 

Calce said he wasn’t worried about finding skilled talent for the project and that the Valley has an educational pipeline for the industry, nor was he concerned about the oil refinery’s proximity to SpaceX’s rocket launching site. 

On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott highlighted the America First Refining project on social media, touting the state’s focus on energy dominance.

“Our low regulations, strong economy, and geographic advantage on the Gulf of America makes the Port of Brownsville the perfect location to build our nation’s newest oil refinery,” Abbott said. “Companies don’t come to Texas despite our policies — they come because of them. Texas delivers again.”