Americas News
Panama Canal Authority Refutes Media Reports of Three Collisions Since Expansion Opening
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has refuted media reports that there have been three collisions in the newly expanded Panama Canal since its official opening in June, IHS Fairplay reports.
As previously reported, some critics say the new locks are too small to safely accommodate some of the larger neo-panamax vessels.
Last week, Ship & Bunker reported that those safety concerns had seemingly been validated after a vessel, the 8,500 TEU Xin Fei Zhou, struck the wall at the new dock on the Atlantic side of the expanded canal.
ACP has confirmed Xin Fei Zhou's collision and cited bad weather as the cause, but says that widespread reports that a total of three ships have run into difficulties while transiting the expanded waterway within the first month of opening are untrue.
"Reports of accidents involving the Lycaste Peace or COSCO Shipping Panama are incorrect. The Lycaste Peace and COSCO Shipping Panama experienced no incidents transiting through the canal," said ACP.
However, the authority did acknowledge that both Lycaste Peace and COSCO Shipping Panama did make contact with canal fenders during while transiting the canal.
"In both of these cases, neither is considered an incident or accident. In fact, contacting fenders during approaches to the locks or inside the chambers of the locks is normal, expected and it is the reason for installing fenders on areas where contact is expected," concluded ACP.
In March, Seaintel ApS (SeaIntel) and other analysts suggested that bunker prices had fallen low enough to make it more cost effective to reroute a number of Asia-U.S. East Coast (USEC) and Asia-North Europe services around south of Africa, avoiding the Panama and Suez canals altogether.
