Drained for maintenance, the Miraflores Locks remain impressive after 93 years of operation. A recently approved expansion plan will double canal capacity by 2015.
In late August, traffic jams at the Atlantic and Pacific entrances to the Panama Canal impeded a healthy chunk of the world's maritime commerce. Each day, on average, more than 40 massive ships, many of them three times as long as a football field and piled high with cargo, rode at anchor in impromptu fleets that stretched across the horizon. On the Atlantic side, most of the ships carried grain from the American heartland, bound for markets in Asia; the vessels on the Pacific side from the Far East were jammed with cars and electronics destined for the U.S. East Coast. Some ships with daily operational costs of $40,000 waited as long as a week for passage.
Ninety-three years after it first opened for business, the Panama Canal is finally maxed out. Designed before the
Titanic was even on drawing boards and while the Wright brothers were still learning to fly, the canal today handles more traffic than its builders could have ever imagined. About 14,000 vessels carrying 5 percent of the world's ocean cargo — 280 million tons — pass through the waterway each year. Despite running the canal around the clock — at close to 90 percent of its theoretical maximum capacity — canal officials are struggling to keep up.
But with global trade booming, major shipping companies are willing to pay dearly for the 50-mile transit across the Isthmus of Panama. During periods when traffic backs up, canal officials sometimes institute an auction to determine which ships get through first. On Aug. 26, BP Shipping bid $220,300, a record for oil tankers, to jump to the head of the line. When combined with the regular transit fee, the passage cost BP $400,000. The auction price was not an anomaly: It was the fourth oil-tanker record that week.
The August traffic jam highlighted both how integral the canal remains to global shipping, and how vulnerable that shipping is to delays. The backup began when crews had to shut down one of two lanes in the Gatun Locks for routine maintenance. A massive breakdown could be devastating. Much like an aging bridge or highway, the Panama Canal has become a transportation paradox — at once a vital artery and a worrisome bottleneck.
For years, major shipping companies built vessels designed to fit the canal's 110-ft.-wide lock chambers the way an ice cube fits in a tray. These so-called Panamax ships carry the bulk of the cargo that transits the canal. Increasingly, however, global shippers are building even bigger vessels, known as post-Panamax ships, that cannot fit through the current canal. (In North America, goods that bypass the canal typically cross the States or Canada by rail.) By 2011 those vessels will represent 37 percent of the world's container ships. To Panama Canal officials, the phrase post-Panamax has a grim ring: It suggests a time in the near future when the canal may become obsolete.
Egypt's Suez Canal already handles 20 percent more traffic than the Pan-ama Canal and generates more than twice as much revenue. And the lockless, sea-level shortcut between Europe and Asia can accommodate supertankers that dwarf the largest vessels transiting the Central American isthmus.
Panama can't afford to let the canal become a backwater. So in October 2006, the country's voters overwhelmingly approved a $5.25 billion plan to expand and modernize the canal. The project will include two new sets of single-lane, three-step locks — one set at the Atlantic entrance and one at the Pacific; two new navigational channels to connect the new locks to existing channels; and deeper, wider versions of existing shipping lanes. In all, canal crews will dredge 130 million cubic meters of rock and soil, enough to fill the Empire State Building nearly 130 times. The new traffic lane will be large enough to accommodate post-Panamax ships and will double the canal's capacity.
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