PANAMA : An official said that limitations on ship transit through the drought-stricken Panama Canal will remain in place for one year. This move has already resulted in a marine traffic gridlock as ships queue up to reach the vital canal connecting two seas.
The canal, an architectural marvel that transports 6% of the world’s marine trade between the Atlantic and Pacific seas, is having trouble getting enough rain to send ships through a series of locks that act like water elevators.
Ilya Espino, the sub-administrator of the canal, told AFP that if there aren’t any significant downpours in the next three months, “we are looking at a period of one year” of limited usage of the waterway.
Clients will have “a year to plan” during that time frame.
The 80-kilometer (50-mile) byway is mostly utilized by travelers from China, Japan, and the United States; on Thursday, 130 boats were lined up at the entrance, as opposed to the typical 90.
Although they now stand at about 11 days, waiting periods, which are typically between three and five days, have occasionally reached 19.
To conserve water, the number of ships passing through the canal each day has decreased from 40 on average in 2022 to 32 now.
Administrators of the canal have also been obliged to limit access to the channel to ships with a draft of 13.11 meters (43 feet), which refers to how deep the ship sits in the water, due to a drought that has been made worse by the El Nino warming phenomena in the Pacific.
200 million gallons of freshwater are required to send each ship through the locks and into the ocean.
The limits, according to canal operators, are projected to cause a $200 million decline in revenues in 2024 compared to this year.
This week, President Laurentino Cortizo of Panama was compelled to refute a claim made by Gustavo Petro of Colombia that the canal was closed because of a drought.
The “special” predicament the canal is experiencing was also mentioned this week by the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Although there is a limitation in place in Panama, as there has been in the past, Cortizo insisted that the Panama Canal was not actually blocked.