Oakland Not Affected by Wider Canal

By Mark Edward Nero

Bigger ships may be using the newly widened Panama Canal, but apparently, they’re not bypassing the Port of Oakland to get there. The wider canal locks have thus far not dented the port’s business in the 90 days since they opened, the port said Sept. 27.

According to port data, Oakland vessel traffic has actually increased since the expanded Canal debuted June 28. The trend counters earlier warnings that larger ships would detour around the US West Coast given Panama access.

Oakland said it received 310 vessel calls in July and August combined, compared to 276 vessels over the same two months in 2015, meaning the port’s vessel traffic has increased 12 percent year-over-year since the Canal expanded.

Oakland’s cargo volume has also increased, according to the data. The port said July and August were two of its three busiest months this year for container handling. It said there’s been no sign of cargo attrition due to the Panama Canal.

“Our customers need an Oakland gateway – not one thousands of miles away,” Port of Oakland Maritime Director John Driscoll said. “Our job now is to keep them here with good service.”

The port said it’s not insulated from Panama’s competitive threat, but declared that it has advantages making cargo migration to the canal unlikely, including local market concentration and export orientation.

Much of the nation’s import cargo is discharged at Southern California ports, then transported east by rail. The Panama Canal provides an alternative to those gateways: direct access to US East Coast ports.

But more than 80 percent of containerized imports discharged in Oakland remain in Northern California or Nevada. That cargo wouldn’t benefit from a Panama Canal option. Also, half of Oakland’s cargo is containerized exports, and the Oakland route is among the shortest to Asia on the US West Coast.

COSCO Vessel to Make Panama History

By Mark Edward Nero

On June 11, the container vessel COSCO Shipping Panama set sail from the Greek Port of Piraeus on its way to Panama to make history. The Neopanamax vessel is to make the inaugural transit of the expanded Panama Canal on June 26 after a 14-day journey.

COSCO Shipping Panama, a new containership that was launched in January, is 984 feet (300 meters) in length and 157 feet (48.25 meters) in beam, and has a container carrying capacity of 9,472 TEUs.

Originally to be named Andronikos, the vessel was renamed by China’s COSCO Shipping to pay respect to the people of Panama and for the honor of the inaugural transit. The ship was selected during a draw for the inaugural transit through the expanded waterway.

The vessel happens to have been built by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, the same company that constructed the valves that control the flow of water through the new locks of the Canal.

Panama Canal Administrator Jorge L. Quijano met with COSCO Shipping Panama’s Captain Jude Rodrigues and crewmembers prior to the ship’s departure.

“I had transited the Panama Canal many times before and it has been a great experience, but being the master of the first vessel to transit the expanded Canal is an experience of a century,” Rodrigues said. “The Panama Canal Expansion is a major event on itself and a milestone in global history.”

During the inauguration, COSCO Shipping Panama will transit Agua Clara Locks on the Atlantic side during the early morning and Cocoli Locks in the afternoon. The regular schedule of transits through the Expanded Canal will follow the next day, June 27.

“Over a hundred years ago, the SS Ancon made history as the first vessel to transit the Panama Canal,” Administrator Quijano said. “In a few weeks, COSCO Shipping Panama, the Panama Canal, and the people of Panama will change the face of global shipping and international commerce.”

The Panama Canal Expansion Program is the largest construction project undertaken in the waterway since its opening in 1914. Construction to double the waterway’s cargo capacity began in 2007.

Panama Canal Expansion Inauguration Set

By Mark Edward Nero

The expansion of Panama Canal, in progress since 2007, is expected to be officially inaugurated on June 26.

The announcement was made by the Panama Canal Authority the morning of March 23 during an inauguration ceremony for the Canal’s Scale Model Maneuvering Training Facility, which will provide additional hands-on experience to pilots and tugboat captains to operate in the expanded Panama Canal.

Under the Canal expansion, capacity is expected to be doubled via the addition of a new traffic lane allowing more and larger ships to traverse the Canal. The expansion program is currently 97 percent complete, according to the Canal Authority. Final testing’s being conducted in the upcoming weeks, leading up to the official June 26 inauguration.

Panama President Juan Carlos Verela was in attendance at the inauguration ceremony for the Scale Model Maneuvering Training Facility, along with the Panama Canal Board of Directors Chairman Roberto Roy, and other Board members.

The 35.3-acre training facility features two lakes connected by a channel modeled after the Canal’s Culebra Cut. It also features docking bays, replicas of the new and existing locks, gates, and chambers, all at a 1:25 scale.

Additionally, the facility is equipped with a number of scale model Panama Canal tugboats, as well as ships. It also has wave and wind generators to provide a realistic, hands-on training experience for Canal pilots and tugboat captains to prepare them for the opening of the expanded waterway.

“The Scale Model Training Facility will allow us to continue providing world-class service to the global maritime industry, while guaranteeing safe and efficient transits through the soon-to-be inaugurated Expanded Canal,” Panama Canal Authority CEO Jorge Quijano said.

Panama Canal Authority: Leaks Fixed Next Month

By Mark Edward Nero

Repairs of leaks detected in the newly constructed third set of locks of the long-awaited Panama Canal expansion are expected to be completed in January, the contractor overseeing the project said Nov. 28.

During a joint press conference with the Panama Canal Authority, contractor Grupo Unidos por el Canal said that ongoing work to reinforce the sills in the new locks should be complete by the end of next month.

As part of its remaining work, Grupo Unidos por el Canal is conducting inspections and reinforcements of each individual sill. It also plans to continue the electromechanical testing on the filling and emptying systems of the new locks.

The additional work became required after stress testing of new locks for the Panama Canal revealed water seepage in a specific area of the new Pacific Ocean-side locks in a section that separates the middle chamber and lower chamber.

Despite the setback, the expansion project has now reached 95 percent completion, according to the Canal Authority, and work continues in other areas of the project.

The $5 billion Panama Canal expansion is expected to allow post-Panamax ships to travel through the canal en route to East Coast terminals, thereby bypassing the US West Coast. It was initially scheduled to be complete in 2014 to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the opening of the existing canal, but snafus have delayed the completion by two years so far.

Study: Panama Canal Could Divert 10 Percent of Cargo

By Mark Edward Nero

The expansion of the Panama Canal “will be the headline event in shipping in 2016” and is set to “reorient the landscape of the logistics industry and alter the decision-making calculus of the shippers that the canal serves,” according to a new study.

According to the research, which was conducted jointly by the Boston Consulting Group and logistics provider CH Robinson, as much as 10 percent of container traffic between East Asia and the US could shift from West Coast ports to East Coast ports by the year 2020.

According to a new study, the $5 billion expansion project will have profound effects once it’s complete.

“The larger ports on the West Coast will experience lower growth rates, altering the competitive balance between West Coast ports and East Coast ports,” the report states, although it also mentions that with global container flows rising, West Coast ports are still expected to handle more containers in the future they do currently.

West Coast ports currently receive two-thirds of container flows from East Asia, with much of that cargo moving by rail and truck as far east as the Ohio River Valley, about three-quarters of the way across the US But once post-Panamax vessels start passing through the expanded canal, the shipping dynamics will change, the report predicts.

In addition to diverting vessel traffic from East Asia away from the West Coast, the Canal’s expansion is also expected to shape the investment and routing decisions of rail and truck carriers, as well as magnify the trade-offs that shippers make between the cost and the speed of transportation, and potentially alter the location of distribution centers.

“There almost certainly will be a shift in the mix of West Coast versus East Coast traffic, and shippers and carriers should start preparing for that shift now,” the report states.

An overview of the report can be read at https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/transportation-travel-tourism-how-panama-canal-expansion-is-redrawing-logistics/ - chapter1

Panama Canal Expansion Now 83 Percent Finished

By Mark Edward Nero

One of the most important phases of the Panama Canal expansion project, the electro-mechanical installation stage, has begun with the installation of the first steel rolling gate at the Atlantic Ocean side, the Panama Canal Authority revealed Dec 19.

Unlike the current Canal, which uses miter gates, the expanded Canal will have steel rolling gates, with the rolling system facilitating gate maintenance.

The arrival of the last four of the 16 rolling gates for the new locks in November and the transfer of the eight gates for the Pacific-side locks through the waterway means all electro-mechanical components are ready to be installed by mid-2015, according to the Canal Authority, which is in charge of operating, managing and maintaining the Panama Canal.

Construction of the new locks is a major component of the Canal’s expansion. Already, much of the 4.4 million cubic meters of concrete needed has been poured, giving form to the structure and making the locks visible.

The massive steel rolling gates weigh on average 3,400 tons and vary in sizes depending on their location (Pacific Ocean or Atlantic) and their position on the locks chambers. The tallest of the gates is 108 feet high, the equivalent of an 11-story building.

To date, the overall program is 83 percent complete, according to the Canal Authority, with several major components already finished, such as the dredging of the canal entrances on the Pacific and Atlantic sides.

Gates Moved to New Panama Canal Locks

By Mark Edward Nero

The Panama Canal expansion has reached an important milestone with the transfer of the first gates to the new locks complex in the Atlantic side, the Panama Canal Authority revealed July 21.

“This is a very important operation because it involved the first movement of the gates from the special dock where they were unloaded to the lower chamber of the new locks,” Canal Authority Administrator Jorge L. Quijano explained.

A key component of the expansion is construction of two new ship lock system complexes – one each on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. The current lock system lifts ships of up to 85 feet to the main elevation of the Panama Canal and down again.

Quijano said the recent gate transfer process was carried out following safety measures to ensure that the more than 3,000-ton steel structures could be moved to the dry lock chambers using a pavement ramp specially built for the purpose. Eight of the 16 rolling gates to be used for the new locks are already in Panama. The remaining eight are expected to arrive in two separate shipments from a manufacturing site in Italy.

This week, the other gates are expected to be moved from the temporary unloading dock to the dry lock chambers to be able to use the area for the arrival of the remaining lock gates.

Among the project’s components are the excavations of new access channels, the widening of existing channels and the deepening of navigation channels. The expansion is expected to allow post-Panamax ships to travel through the canal en route to East Coast terminals, something that could negatively affect West Coast vessel traffic.

The Panama Canal Expansion Program is about 77 percent complete, according to the Canal Authority.

Panama Canal Expansion Reaches New Milestone

The Panama Canal Expansion project is now more than 60 percent complete, according to the latest progress report from the government agency in charge of managing and overseeing the project.

As of late July, the expansion was 60.4 percent finished, a 15 percent increase from a year ago, reports the Panama Canal Authority.

The project, which involves the construction of a third lane of traffic, is expected to double the canal’s capacity by 2015, was reportedly almost 45 percent complete as of August 31, 2012, but is believed to be about six months behind it’s originally projected schedule.

The project, which was officially kicked off in September 2007, consists of, among other things, the excavations of new access channels, the widening of existing channels and the deepening of navigation channels.

The expansion is expected to allow post-Panamax ships to travel through the canal en route to East Coast terminals, something that could negatively affect West Coast vessel traffic.

The Panama Canal Authority also says that both canal entrances are now ready for bigger ships because the deepening and widening of the Atlantic and Pacific access channels have been completed.

Also, the Authority says, in June the Panama Canal received three of the 14 new tugboats that are expected to enhance the Canal’s current fleet. The additional tugs are to be used to assist post-Panamax vessels expected to transit the expanded Canal.

A final commissioning of the expansion is planned to begin in September 2014, with commercial transits expected to begin by mid-2015.