Panama Canal undergoes major expansion to increase capacity

Wednesday, 17 August 2011 12:51

News & Events - Engineering News

August 17, 2011

The Panama Canal served as one of the world’s most ambitious engineering projects when it was constructed more than a century ago. According to reports, crews are working to expand the waterway’s capacity.

The Panama Canal is one of the globe’s most strategically vital transportation routes, with ships carrying a wide array of goods circumventing the arduous trip around the tip of South America. The waterway connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and its construction helped to significantly boost global trading.

However, the Panama Canal was not built to handle the exceedingly large vessels of modernity, and as a result, its capacity is limited to roughly 35 ships per day. The waterway's two locks, constructed over a 10-year period at the beginning of the 20th century, are capable of supporting ships up to 965 feet long and 106 feet wide.

According to a report from The New York Times, crews are currently working to construct a third, far bigger lock, capable of handling a significantly larger vessel. The new waterway will also serve to help reduce the backlog of ships that often results as thousands of ships look to pass through each year.

The new lock will effectively increase the size of so-called “Panamax" ships, which refers to the biggest such vessels capable of crossing the waterway. "New Panamax" ships will be 25 percent longer, 50 percent wider and will also have a deeper draft as well, allowing them to carry as much as 300 percent more cargo than the largest ships are able to transport now.

Though the project has only just begun, engineers estimate it will be completed by 2014, according to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald. Work to expand the canal - the first such project in the waterway’s history - could drastically alter worldwide shipping routes and trade patterns, analysts assert, as businesses will be able to ship significantly more goods than before.

Moreover, it will also expedite trading routes between the U.S. and Asian countries, among others, according to the Morning Herald.

While the expansion is by no means the biggest ongoing engineering project in the world, "this is one that has the most foreign impact," Panama Canal Authority executive vice president Jorge L. Quijano said. "And I think it is the one that has the most impact on the United States."