Moderators Moderator_03 Posted March 15 Moderators Share Posted March 15 Quote The Panama Canal is Increasing Traffic Posted 14/03/2024 The Panama Canal Authority is taking further steps to ease some of the restrictions on transits imposed due to water restrictions. Starting later this month, they are increasing the available spots for daily transits by a further 12 percent after delaying planned reductions earlier in the year. Two additional slots will be offered through the auction system for transit dates beginning March 18, and an additional slot will become available for transit dates beginning March 25 for the original locks. According to the authority, these measures will allow the majority of vessels that want to transit the Panama Canal to have a better chance of obtaining a reservation. Since the start of the restrictions the authority has urged shippers to use the reservation system to elevate some of the longer waits for transit. Current data shows that the industry has adapted to the restrictions resulting in a dramatic drop in the waits as some vessels divert and others use the reservations. Data shows that there were just 46 vessels in the queue for transit down from a peak of over 100 ships. Further, 37 have reservations with only nine in the queue without reservations. Equally important the wait times for transits have been reduced to less than one day for northbound vessels without reservations and five days for southbound vessels. Under the latest plan, the authority will increase the number of daily transits to 20 through the historical locks that serve most of the vessels at the canal. Transits for the larger Neopanamax locks, however, will remain reduced at just seven a day versus the recent level of 10. Total transits as of late March will have increased to 27 per day which remains at nearly half of peak levels. https://www.newsroompanama.com/business/the-panama-canal-is-increasing-traffic-1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Moderator_03 Posted April 10 Author Moderators Share Posted April 10 Quote Panama Canal to Increase Transits to 36 Posted 09/04/2024 The Panama Canal Authority plans to increase transits to 36 daily allowing conditions to fully normalize in 2025. The Canal plans to gradually ease transit restrictions. Currently 27 daily transits are allowed. Rainy season will improve the level of the lakes and current forecasts indicate that steady rain will arrive at the end of April and continue for the following months. More than three quarters of the ships that are waiting to transit the Panama Canal today have reservations and, therefore, will transit on a predetermined date with a minimum waiting time,” says the ACP. The Canal adds that the average waiting time for ships arriving without reservations this year has been just less than 2.5 days, much lower than the 3.6 days experienced between January and March of last year, and the 3.8 days recorded during the same period in 2022. The outlook and projections indicate that the rains will increase in intensity after April and the Canal will progressively increase transits again until reaching 36 ships per day through the channel. If the rains do not meet expectations, new restrictions on daily passage or draft could be maintained or applied. Either way, the canal is a winner. https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/panama-canal-to-increase-transits-to-36 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Moderator_03 Posted April 17 Author Moderators Share Posted April 17 Quote Panama Canal Will Increase Transits to 32 in June Posted 15/04/2024 The Panama Canal will increase transits to 32 daily starting June 1 of this year, based on rain projections that suggest that the level of Gatun Lake, the largest of the two reservoirs managed by the Panama Canal, will recover. The announcement was made by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) in a statement sent to Newsroom Panama this afternoon, April 15 2024. The plan is to increase transits to 36 daily by 2025. Maersk OC1 service will be sailing through the channel once again now that life is better on the canal, making about 8 monthly transits. If you happen to know any canal workers looking for a job, the Panama Canal needs about 2000 workers over the next five years. Talk with our friend Ricaurte Vásquez at the Panama Canal for details on the jobs available. https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/panama-canal-will-increase-transits-to-32-in-june Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Admin_03 Posted May 17 Administrators Share Posted May 17 Quote Panama Canal Slowly Returning to Normal Operations Posted 17/05/2024 The increase in water levels in the Panama Canal has sparked hopes of a potential return to normal operations for container shipping after over a year of restrictions due to a severe drought. However, experts warn that the situation, while improving, is far from returning to pre-restriction levels. The Panama Canal Authority has increased the daily number of ships allowed to transit the waterway from 24 to 31. The increase will provide limited relief for container shipping services, since the increase corresponds to additional slots in the smaller Panamax locks. However, a more meaningful change is anticipated on June 1, with an additional transit slot for larger Neopanamax ships (including containerships), which will raise the daily total to 32. Meanwhile, authorities also plan to increase the draft limits for Neopanamax ships from 44 feet to 45 feet on June 15, bringing it closer to the normal limit of 50 feet. The disruption caused by the water shortage in the Panama Canal has had a significant impact on scheduling reliability and spot rates. As the Panama Canal slowly transitions towards normal operations, businesses need to be prepared for a slow recovery that is dependent on unpredictable factors like rainfall. While hopes for a return to ‘normal’ are high, the reality may be a different. Some folks hold the position that the impact of drought in the Panama Canal will be felt for years rather than months. Most people in the know, are very optimistic about the future of the Panama Canal. https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/panama-canal-slowly-returning-to-normal-operations Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Moderator_03 Posted May 20 Author Moderators Share Posted May 20 Quote The Situation with the Panama Canal Has Improved Posted 19/05/2024 The situation with the Panama Canal, affected last year by a severe drought that forced vessel transit to be restricted, "has improved," the secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Trade said Sunday in the Panamanian capital. “We see that there has been an improvement this year and that the management of the canal and its authorities has effectively improved the restriction that began last year.” Grynspan, visited our Central American country to see in person the situation of the canal, and discussed her findings with Newsroom Panama, regarding the interoceanic waterway, the only freshwater waterway in the world and through which around 3% of international trade passes. She cited data from a study by the agency according to which, by last January, “transit through the Panama Canal had decreased by 49% compared to the peak in December 2021,” a figure that is now at 42%. “From 49% to 42%........I think it is a very important figure. But it remains true that there are restrictions on the passage of ships that are very important for all of Latin America,” she said. “Chile, Peru, Ecuador export through the Panama Canal. But for the world it is a very important issue because China also exports through the Panama Canal,” said Grynspan. Under optimal conditions, about 36 ships cross the Panama Canal daily. Today there are 31 ships that cross the canal daily and they do so as part of the reduction in transits that has been applied since July 2023, which left the figure at 22 vessels last November and they even had plans to take it to 18 in February of this year if the situation did not improve. Fortunately those bad forecasts ultimately did not materialize before the improvement in water availability happened as a natural event. The Panama Canal said at the beginning of last April that it hopes to completely normalize ship transits in 2025. https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/the-situation-with-the-panama-canal-has-improved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Moderator_03 Posted May 27 Author Moderators Share Posted May 27 Quote The Panama Canal Expects up to 32 Ships to Cross Daily as of June 1st Posted 27/05/2024 The rainy season officially started for the Panama Canal on May 7, which has begun to be reflected little by little in the level of lakes Gatún and Alajuela. This is important news for the country. The serious drought, a product of the El Niño phenomenon, forced the interoceanic waterway to apply drastic measures to face an unprecedented situation until 2023, reducing the daily traffic of ships to only allow, at one time, the passage of 24 ships. The Panama Canal has welcomed more ships per day in May, signaling a slow return to normalcy for the waterway and a wider sigh of relief for shippers hoping for an end to transit restrictions that have been in place since last summer. According to the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), as many as 32 ships will be allowed to reverse a spot to sail through the waterway by June based on the present and projected level of the manmade Gatún Lake, which was heavily impacted by a months-long drought during Panama’s May-to-November rainy season last year. Clarksons Research said in analysis earlier this month that total transits in the canal are still down by 30 percent compared to a year prior. Under normal circumstances, 36 to 38 vessels are allowed to be booked to transit the Panama Canal per day. With the country’s dry season coming to an end this month, the ACP has already been easing restrictions that were originally put in place throughout the second half of 2023, most recently increasing the number of daily reservations allowed from 24 to 27. With the completion of the maintenance, this number increased again to 31 per day across both the original Panamax locks (24 vessels) and the newer Neopanamax locks (seven vessels). Additionally, an extra slot will open in the Neopanamax locks starting June 1, with crossings expected to remain at 32 per day until further notice. The Panamax locks enable passage of smaller ships up to 966 feet long, while larger ships that fit the Neopanamax locks have a maximum length of 1,215 feet. Beyond the transit bookings, the ACP is also easing draft restrictions for Neopanamax ships, adding one foot back to the current maximum depth allowed of 44 feet. Effective June 15, the maximum authorized draft for vessels transiting the Neopanamax locks will be 45 feet. The draft for Panamax ships remains unchanged at a maximum depth of 39.5 feet. By June 16, the ACP expects the Panamax draft to remain the same, while it anticipates lifting the depth restrictions again to 46 feet for Neopanamax ships. Official water levels at Gatún Lake were 80.3 feet deep, 2.6 feet shallower than the 82.9 average in April over the five previous years. This represents a significant closing in the gap from the 5.5-foot average differential in January, when water levels were 81.4 feet deep compared to the usual average of 86.9 feet. The restrictions implemented last year amid the low water levels appear to have worked, cutting down total canal waters time from 66.5 hours on average in August to 20.7 hours in March. Canal waters time is the average time it takes a vessel to transit the canal, including waiting time for passage. Without accounting for the wait, average in-transit times dropped from 11.4 hours to 9.4 hours. And while the Panama Canal Authority reported as many as 161 vessels queued up to transit the waterway as of Aug. 10—accounting for both those who booked a reservation and those without an appointment—that number has fallen off drastically. Due to the prior booking slot restrictions amid the drought conditions, the ACP also is amending one more policy by giving temporary priority to Panamax passenger vessels who are planning on booking 90 days ahead of Oct. 1. Although conditions have improved, the country’s government wants to ensure a repeat of last year’s events doesn’t occur. In March, Panama’s Council of Ministers unveiled the creation of Multimodal Dry Canal project in an effort to speed up the movement of goods through the isthmus and improve clearance times. As part of the project, the country would integrate existing roads, railways, port facilities, airports, logistics warehouses and duty-free zones to create a new special customs jurisdiction to provide a dry route as an alternative to the roughly 50-mile waterway. Maersk debuted a similar “land bridge” service to kick off 2024, bypassing the canal on one of its trade routes amid the shipping delays posed by the transit restrictions. As part of the service, the company would split its Oceania-to-the-Americas route into two loops on each side of the canal, where cargo would be dropped off at a port before being transported to the other side via rail and picked up by a ship. The container shipping giant recently announced as of mid-May it would restore traditional transit through the canal, eliminating the need to move containers via the land bridge. https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/the-panama-canal-expects-up-to-32-ships-to-cross-daily-as-of-june-1st Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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