Americas News
Cracked Lock Means "Likely" Delay for Panama Canal Opening
Cracks in the concrete walls of a lock may mean that the planned opening of the newly expanded Panama Canal will be delayed, Reuters reports.
The Canal is scheduled to open by April of 2016, but when asked if a delay is imminent, Manuel Benitez, deputy administrator of the Panama Canal Authority, replied, "it is likely."
Of the many components of the expansion, the most significant is said to be the Third Set of Locks project, assigned to a consortium made up of the infrastructure and engineering companies of Italy's Salini Impregilo, Spain's Sacyr, and Belgium's Jan de Nul.
A crack developed in the new Cocoli Locks on the country's Pacific side in August of this year .
Benitez refused to speculate how long a delay would be, pointing out that he is awaiting an update from the consortium.
"Everything depends on the contractor; what we don't want is to speed this thing up if the result is not up to the quality (required)," he said.
In addition to the expanded canal allowing larger vessels such as 4,500- to 8,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity box ships to sail from Asia to the East and Gulf Coast regions of North America, it's anticipated that the canal will boost bunkering activities in the Caribbean - with the port of Kingston, Jamaica cited by some sources as a location to potentially benefit from increased storage needs.
One Jamaican player has told Ship & Bunker that Jamaica could "realize its potential as the logistics hub of the Caribbean."
