Due to severe drought in Panama, the operator of the important canal has to conserve water and reduce capacity. This leads to traffic jams on both sides.
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X / @Rainmaker1973 – More than 200 cargo ships are waiting to cross the Panama Canal as the region suffers its worst drought in 100 years.
Basics in a nutshell
- The operator of the Panama Canal has reduced its daily capacity by four ships.
- That is why now more than 200 ships await their passage on both sides of the canal.
- Some even have to pay an additional $900,000 for passage.
The El Niño weather phenomenon is currently causing exceptional drought in Panama. It hasn’t rained for almost half a year, while the evaporation rate is very high. We are talking about the worst drought in the last 100 years.
Merchant ships that have to pass through the Panama Canal feel this feeling more and more. Because: on the one hand, larger ships have to reduce their tonnage so that their draft is reduced. On the other hand, the canal operator operates with a lower lock capacity, wrote the Wall Street Journal.
The reason for this is that each use requires about 200 million liters of fresh water, which then flows into the oceans. For this reason, the operator reduced the capacity of the 80-kilometre canal to 32 vessels per day. Normally, 36 ships cross the important world trade waterway each day.
Oil tankers and bulk carriers stuck in traffic
As a result, more than 200 ships are now waiting to cross both sides of the Panama Canal. Some for about three weeks.
Among the ships affected were gas and chemical tankers or bulk carriers carrying cargoes of grain, coal, cement or fertilizer.
Their problem is that they are usually booked on short notice, while container ships operate on long-term schedules. Their shipping companies book canal transit up to a year in advance.
The canal operators therefore treat them preferentially: they do not have to wait at all or hardly at all for their passage.
An additional $900,000
But there are also exceptions for container ships: “We had two ships that couldn’t book, and it was very expensive.” This is what the director of the shipping company Maersk explains to the “Washington Post”. “We went to an auction and paid $900,000 per ship on top of the normal fee of $400,000. To allow passage.”
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There are hardly any substitutes, and they will cost and make the goods more expensive. According to the Reuters news agency, about 170 countries and all kinds of goods were affected by the huge traffic jam. These include, for example, soybeans from the USA, copper from China, or beef from Brazil.
Other rivers must be diverted
But droughts like this could become the norm due to climate change. Therefore, the operator wants to divert four more rivers into the Panama Canal in the future, and three rivers have so far fed it. But it may take another ten years to implement it. Cost point: about $2 billion.
About 3.5 percent of sea trade is handled through this waterway. According to the canal authority, the capacity will remain limited until at least early September.
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