Panama Canal Raises Rates Due to Drought Situation 

 

The Panama Canal has added new fees and changed its reservation system to counter historic drought levels.

“Due to changing rainfall patterns and historic low water levels at Gatun Lake, the main source of water for the waterway, the Panama Canal today that it will implement a series of new measures beginning February 15 to sustain an operational level of water and provide reliability to customers while it implements a long-term solution to water,” said a statement from the Panama Canal Authority.

This past year's rainfall was 20 per cent below the historic average and the fifth driest year in 70 years. It follows several years of lower than average rainfall coupled by a 10 per cent increase in water evaporation levels due to a 0.5-1.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature.

Without fee and operational changes, the Canal's water levels are projected to drop to levels that would affect the Neopanamax and Panamax Locks. These new measures are intended to better provide reliability in water levels and therefore transit schedules.

A new freshwater fee will be applied to all vessels over 125 feet in length overall (LOA) that transit through the Panama Canal, and will include the following components: A fixed fee of $10,000 per transit and a variable fee ranging from a minimum of 1 per cent to a maximum of 10 per cent of the vessel's toll will be applied depending on Gatun Lake levels at the time of transit (i.e. if the lake has a higher level, the percentage will be lower and vice versa).

The Panama Canal will adjust the number of daily reservation slots available to 27, replicating the total offered during lane outages.

The waterway will also require that each vessel pays its booking fee in full no later than 48 hours depending on the booking period.

A handling service fee will be applied to all visits for transit at the time they are created in the system. The processing fee will be applied as follows: For vessels 91 feet in beam and over: $5,000. For vessels over 125 feet LOA, but less than 91 feet in beam: $1,500.

The fee will be deducted from the vessel's tolls invoice once the vessel begins transit. If the vessel cancels the visit and does not transit, the Vessel Visit Creation Fee will not be refunded. All visits created prior to February 15, 2020 will be honoured and will not be required to pay this fee.

“The decision to adopt such measures was taken following an evaluation of the impact of innovative techniques already instituted to save water used in the Canal's operations. For example, the Panama Canal has been implementing cross-filling lockages, a technique that sends water between the two lanes at the Panamax Locks during transits and saves an amount of water equivalent to that used in six lockages each day,” the Panama Canal Authority said.

Carnival Miracle Kicks Off Year-Round Schedule From Tampa

PHOTO: Carnival Miracle docked in Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos. (photo via Wikimedia Commons/HurricaneX31)

Carnival Cruise Line's 2,124-passenger Carnival Miracle kicked off a year-round program of seven-day cruises from Tampa this weekend. The move doubles the line's capacity at the port and further bolsters its position as the leader in Caribbean cruising.

Carnival Miracle will offer the only year-round, longer-length cruise program from Port Tampa Bay, offering an unbeatable mix of destinations that appeal to a broad range of consumers, including families seeking an attractive and affordable vacation option.

Carnival Miracle joins Carnival Paradise which operates year-round four- to eight-day voyages from Tampa to the Caribbean and Cuba. Together, Carnival Miracle and Carnival Paradise will carry an estimated 280,000 passengers annually from Tampa – the most of any cruise operator.

"Carnival Cruise Line has been sailing from Tampa for nearly 25 years and we're thrilled to add a second year-round ship to provide our guests with an even greater variety of fantastic cruise vacation choices from this convenient homeport," said Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line. "We would like to recognize our partners at Port Tampa Bay and the Tampa community, as well as our valued travel agent partners, for their efforts in making Tampa one of our most popular and successful embarkation ports," she added.

"We're delighted that Carnival Cruise Line will have two year-round cruise ships dedicated to the Tampa market," said Paul Anderson, President/CEO Port Tampa Bay. "It speaks to the record-breaking demand of passengers in the Tampa Bay area wanting to get on a Carnival cruise."

Seven-Day Sailings from Tampa

On its week-long Tampa-based cruise program, Carnival Miracle departs Port Tampa Bay Saturdays or Sundays calling at four popular western Caribbean ports: Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Mahogany Bay (Roatan) and Belize, each known for their world-class beaches, varied shore excursion opportunities, centuries-old historical sites and excellent dining and shopping experiences.

These voyages from Tampa are part of Carnival's exclusive Cozumel Plus program, which features extended stays that provide guests even more opportunities to experience and explore one of the Caribbean's most diverse vacation destinations with a variety of exciting and unforgettable excursion choices, many taking place on Mexico's mainland.

New Six- to 14-Day Cruises to the Caribbean, Panama Canal

Carnival recently added several six- to 14-day sailings aboard Carnival Miracle visiting spectacular ports throughout the Caribbean as well as an unforgettable opportunity to experience a partial transit of the Panama Canal. During the transit, guests will experience one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World and sail on Gatun Lake, one of the largest man-made bodies of water in the world.

The new six-day voyages feature day-long stops at Cozumel, Belize, and Costa Maya or Mahogany Bay. Departure dates include Sept. 2 and Nov. 11, 2018, and Jan. 27 and March 31, 2019.

Eight-day Panama Canal cruises depart April 14 and Sept. 8, 2018, and Feb. 2 and April 6, 2019, and include a partial transit of the Panama Canal along with stops at Limon (Costa Rica) and Grand Cayman. There's also an eight-day, five-port Caribbean cruise that departs Nov. 17, 2019, visiting Cozumel, Costa Maya, Mahogany Bay, Belize and Grand Cayman.

Miracle will also offer a 14-day Carnival Journeys Panama Canal cruise round-trip from Tampa Dec. 2-16, 2018, featuring Cozumel and Limon prior to a partial Panama Canal transit followed by visits to Cartagena (Colombia), Aruba, Curacao and Montego Bay (Jamaica). Guests sailing on Journeys cruises enjoy unique local dining and entertainment experiences and a number of shipboard-enrichment activities.

Signature Carnival Innovations

Guests sailing aboard Carnival Miracle can enjoy a wide range of onboard choices, the Caribbean-inspired RedFrog Pub, the cocktail pharmacy-themed Alchemy Bar, Nick and Nora's steakhouse located atop the ship's 10-deck-high atrium, a luxurious 14,500-square-foot spa, and a Serenity adults-only retreat. Of the ship's 1,062 staterooms, 80 percent offer either an ocean view or private balcony.

Family-friendly options include Seuss at Sea, an exclusive partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Hasbro, The Game Show, with larger-than-life adaptations of the company's iconic games and complimentary programming for children in three age groups – Camp Ocean (ages 2-11), Circle "C" (12-14) and Club O2 (15-17).

Just one cruise ship scheduled to use new Panama Canal locks

Just one cruise ship scheduled to use new Panama Canal locks

Caribbean Princess

The new, wider locks on the Panama Canal will open June 26 with the first official transit of a cargo ship, but don’t expect much traffic through them from cruise ships.

Only one cruise ship has reserved space to move through the new locks, which are open to one cruise ship a day starting in June 2017, according to the Panama Canal Authority.

Princess Cruises' Caribbean Princess is scheduled to make a series of thirteen 10-day cruises through the canal beginning Oct. 21, 2017.

At 118 feet wide, the 3,080-passenger Caribbean Princess can’t fit into the 110-foot locks that were opened in 1914. The new locks had been scheduled to open in time for the centennial but were delayed by disputes between Panama and the consortia of contractors that built them.

The new locks rely on tugs rather than electric locomotives to move ships through them. Doubts have been raised about the ability to fit the tugs in the locks along with the longest ships, but at 951 feet, the Caribbean Princess will have room to spare in the 1,400 foot locks.

For cargo ships, questions have also been raised about the record-low depths of water in Gatun Lake, which connects locks on the Atlantic and Pacific side of the canal. Depths hit 81.75 feet earlier this year. But large cruise ships typically need only about 30 feet to operate.

Most cruise ships transiting the Panama Canal will continue to use the old locks. Cruise lines have several ships operating in Alaska that would need the new locks to move to the Atlantic, such as Royal Caribbean International’s Explorer of the Seas and Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Solstice. But for now they are stationed year-round in the Pacific, moving to Australia, New Zealand and the Far East during the winter.

A spokesman for Carnival Cruise Line said Carnival doesn't have any full transit Panama Canal cruises scheduled through April 2018.

Holland America Line recently launched the Koningsdam, the first HAL ship that will not fit through the old locks, but it is currently deployed in Europe during the summer and the Caribbean during the winter.

PHOTOS: First Ship Passes Through Panama Canal’s New Locks

The first trial run with a Post-Panamax cargo ship in the new sets of locks on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, in Panama City, Panama June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Thanks to https://gcaptain.com/ for the story.

A post-panamax bulk carrier became the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal’s new locks on Thursday, kicking off a series of trial runs ahead of the expanded canal’s grand opening later this month. 

The $5.3 billion expansion project involves the construction of a new set of locks on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides and multiple dredging projects to create a second lane of traffic along the canal. The new locks are much wider and deeper than the current locks.

The first run was meant to simulate a southbound transit through the new Agua Clara locks on Atlantic side of the 255-meter-long, 43m wide MV Boroque, which was chartered by the Panama Canal Authority specifically for this purpose. 

The trial runs will help Panama Canal workers prepare for the start of commercial operations on June 27 when the first vessels will begin using the new “neopanamax” locks on either ends of the canal. Unlike the existing locks, which use locomotives, the new locks require the use of two tugs positioned forward and aft to guide the ships through.

For that reason, Panama Canal pilots and tugboat captains have been required to go through extensive training at the canal’s own simulator training center and a nearby scale model facility, but there’s nothing like the real. 

Panama Canal Authority

Before heading through the new locks, the MV Boroque was boarded by Panama Canal pilots before entering designated canal waters.

Panama Canal Authority

Headed for the new locks. Panama Canal Authority

Like you will see in this video explaining the operation of the new locks, the MV Boroque was met by two tugs, one forward and one after, before entering the locks. 

Panama Canal Authority

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

The lead tug here was the Cerro Santiago, one of many built by the Panama Canal Authority in anticipation of the new locks. 

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Workers pull the rope during the first trial run of a Post-Panamax cargo ship in the new sets of locks on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, in Panama City, Panama June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Panama Canal Authority

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

The first trial run with a Post-Panamax cargo ship in the new sets of locks on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, in Panama City, Panama June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

Panama Canal Authority

Inauguration of the Third Set of Locks project is scheduled for June 26 with commercial operations scheduled to begin the next day. During the initial stage of operation, only four vessels per day will be allowed to use the new locks to allow workers the chance to get used to the new operation. 

Panama Canal Authority

Panama Canal Authority

Panama Canal Authority

Panama Canal Fever Sweeps Globe Again as New Era in Trade Nears

Panamas new locks on the right, the old locks on the left.

The new Third Set of Locks on the Atlantic side of the expanded Panama Canal, pictured right, with the existing locks to the left in May 2016. Credit: Panama Canal Authority

A century after transforming global markets, the Panama Canal is about to redraw world trade once again.

Nine years of construction work, at a cost of more than $5 billion, have equipped the canal with a third set of locks and deeper navigation channels, crucial improvements that will double the isthmus’s capacity for carrying cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

When the new locks slide open to receive traffic for the first time in late June, the reverberations will be felt from Asian gas terminals to Great Plains farms and ports from Miami to Long Beach to Santiago.

The debut coincides, fortuitously, with a surge in U.S. natural-gas production that has shale outfits suddenly seeking out new export markets. The deeper channels will be able to accommodate the kind of massive tankers that transport liquefied natural gas, shaving eleven days and a third of the cost off the typical round trip to the Far East. Markets from Chile to China will also become more accessible for oil drillers across the Americas while millions of tons of container shipments originating from Asia could start bypassing western U.S. ports and opt to dock instead along the Gulf Coast or Eastern seaboard.

The anticipated growth has triggered a multibillion-dollar dredging and building binge at ports in the U.S., Caribbean and South America, all seeking to win a share of the traffic boom. Panama is also bidding to become a distribution hub for global manufacturers, with plans to add space for more than 5 million additional cargo containers.

“There are going to be a lot of feeder services that develop around it,” Moses Kopmar, a Moody’s Investors Service analyst in New York, said in a telephone interview. “What it will do is basically unlock a huge amount of the global fleet in terms of being able to transit the canal.”

The expansion won’t solve all the canal’s challenges. While tripling the size of cargo vessels it can receive, Panama still won’t be able to take the biggest container ships or crude tankers. What’s more, its traffic will depend on the health of the global economy more than its dimensions, Kopmar said.

But expansion was critical, industry experts say, for a shipping route that risked losing relevance if it didn’t grow to handle the increasingly large vessels favored nowadays. The canal, which carried some 340 million tons of cargo in the fiscal year that ended last September, accounts for about 6 percent of total world trade.

3,200-Ton Doors

When it opened for business, the canal was an engineering marvel.

In the 34-year span that began with France’s failed attempt and ended with the U.S. completion in 1914, some 75,000 workers toiled to carve out the 50-mile long (80 kilometer) channel. In the process, they created an artificial body of water, Gatun Lake, and an earthen dam that at the time were the world’s largest. They also opened up the mammoth Culebra Cut, a ditch through the Continental Divide that required the removal of about 100 million cubic yards of rock and shale. By the time work was complete, some 25,000 people were dead, many succumbing to yellow fever, malaria and other tropical diseases, according to the Panama Canal Authority.

The latest construction has come with less tragedy but its own share of cost overruns and engineering snafus. Leaky locks were one major problem, helping delay the project by two years. Those locks — a set of chambers sealed by 3,200-ton doors that raise and lower water levels — provide access to a wider lane for vessels: 180 feet across, compared with 109 feet in the original locks. (Many cargo ships squeeze through nowadays with just a couple feet of clearance on each side.) In the middle of the isthmus, the canal authority has also dredged deeper, wider lanes through Gatun Lake, where ships spend much of the inter-oceanic voyage.

For gas and crude oil companies reeling from the recent collapse in prices, the drop in time and shipping costs will provide a much-needed lift. Corn, soybean and wheat growers in the U.S. also stand to benefit, along with importers like Dole Food Co. Inc. and Chiquita Brands International Inc.

“We can send gas ships that couldn’t fit through the canal before,” said Bill Diehl, president of the Greater Houston Port Bureau, a maritime industry trade group. “Asia looks like a good market for us now. The shipping costs look like a fair fight.”

While the current locks are too small for most natural-gas carriers, almost 90 percent of the world fleet will be able to use the canal after expansion, the authority says. That’ll cut the round trip from the U.S. Gulf to Asia to about 20 days, compared with 31 days through the Suez Canal or 34 around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Sailing from Louisiana to Tokyo via Panama would be about 35 percent cheaper than taking the Suez, according to Jason Feer, head of business intelligence at Houston-based ship broker Poten & Partners.

“It certainly gives U.S. LNG producers options,” Feer said. “And it is a significant percentage of the reason that Asian buyers have been willing to sign contracts with U.S. producers.”

For a QuickTake explainer on liquefied natural gas, click here.

The impact on oil markets is likely to be more muted. While the canal will open to bigger “Post-Panamax” tankers, it still won’t fit Very Large Crude Carriers, the 2-million barrel behemoths that transport most of the world’s petroleum. Still, the canal anticipates the upgrades could open up new routes for oil from Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia. The U.S. government lifted its 40 year-old ban on crude exports in December and so far just one shipment has crossed the canal: 380,000 barrels of West Texas Intermediate sold to a Nicaraguan refinery in April.

“It’s a new trade and we have to see how it evolves,” said Jose Ramon Arango, the canal’s senior specialist for liquid bulk shipments. “I’m quite confident we will play a role in that evolution.”

The bigger canal may also trigger a shift for container ships that carry everything from clothes to chemicals into the U.S., the world’s largest importer. With the latest generation of ships too large for the original locks, most of that traffic now unloads in Los Angeles, Seattle and other West Coast destinations.

Though Western ports will retain a time advantage even after the new locks are in operation, cities from New York to Houston have been scrambling to upgrade facilities so they can handle the larger ships and volumes they expect. American ports will spend about $150 billion over the next four years to reduce congestion and accommodate bigger ships, the American Association of Port Authorities estimates. Caribbean destinations are also bidding to become distribution and logistics hubs for the increased traffic. Jamaica alone envisions some $8 billion in investments.

“It’s something you’ve got to do to remain relevant,” said Brian Taylor, chief executive officer of the Jacksonville Port Authority, which is seeking federal aid for a $700 million plan to deepen its waters in northern Florida. “All ships are getting bigger.”

And so is the Panama Canal.