Panama
Canal being expanded
Trinidad Guardian
Port Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
09 09 07
Lofty rhetoric, followed by explosions that blew
off parts of a hillside, marked the beginning of
a multi-billion-dollar expansion of the Panama
Canal last Monday.
The US$5.25 billion expansion will accommodate
a new class of huge ships capable of carrying more
than twice the number of containers as the vessels
that currently transit the waterway. Completion
is set for 2014 to coincide with the 100th anniversary
of the inauguration of the original canal.
Overwhelmingly
approved by voters in October, the expansion
is Panama’s bid to capture
a bigger share of the booming global container
trade, much of which bypasses the waterway because
the supersized cargo ships can’t fit in the
canal’s locks. The project is also a defensive
move to co-opt proposals for competing waterways,
including one in neighbouring Nicaragua, analysts
said.
President
Carter, who authorised the transfer of the canal
to Panama in a treaty he signed in
1977 with Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos, attended
the ceremony. Torrijos’ son, Panamanian President
Martin Torrijos, lauded Carter’s courage
and praised him as “an esteemed friend of
Panama.”
After a two-decade transition, the canal was finally
turned over to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, as was
the Canal Zone, a corridor ten miles wide and 50
miles long. The Panama Canal Administration has
drawn praise from international observers on its
management of the canal since the turnover.
Carter’s initiative was criticised by his
successor, Ronald Reagan, and may have been a factor
in Carter’s unsuccessful 1980 re-election
bid. But Carter has received generally high marks
from analysts for generating goodwill among Latin
American neighbours and for avoiding conflict over
control of the canal.
“You demonstrated extraordinary personal
courage in committing yourself to hand over the
Panama Canal and in dismantling the colonial structure
installed in the center of our territory,” President
Torrijos told Carter.
Rumours
had floated that Carter might not attend the
ceremony in protest of the recent election
of Pedro Miguel Gonzalez as president of Panama’s
National Assembly. Gonzalez was indicted in 1995
in a Washington federal court in connection with
the May 1992 murder of US soldier Zak Hernandez
in the Canal Zone.
Gonzalez
is still wanted in the US, and the State Department
has criticized Gonzalez’s election.
US government sources who asked not to be identified
said Gonzalez’s assembly leadership might
even block the pending US-Panama free trade agreement.
Joining
Carter at the event were regional presidents,
including Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, Honduras’ Manuel
Zelaya, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and El
Salvador’s Elias Antonio Saca. Jose Miguel
Inzulsa, secretary-general of the Organisation
of American States, also was among an estimated
40,000 people at the ceremony.
When complete, the expanded canal will accommodate
ships capable of carrying 12,000 containers, up
from a maximum 5,000 containers.
A five-mile bypass on the Pacific side of the
current canal is a central part of the expansion.
So are two new sets of locks that will measure
1,400 feet long and 180 feet wide. The current
locks are nearly 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide.
The new locks will also have a 50-foot draft, compared
with the current 39 feet.
One of the technical innovations of the new design
is that 60 per cent of the water used to fill the
locks will be recycled using special catch basins
to be built with German technology. All the Gatun
Lake water used to fill the canal locks now is
flushed out to sea.
President
Torrijos promised that the expanded canal would
usher in a new age of economic growth “without
poverty, without misery, without illiteracy and
desperation.”
Francisco Miguez, co-ordinator of the expansion
plan, said in an interview that the project would
generate 8,000 direct jobs and an additional 35,000
indirect jobs among related supply and service
firms.
Unlike the original canal project a century ago,
when thousands of workers were imported from neighboring
countries, Panama will supply all the required
labor, Miguez said. Large-scale programmes to produce
skilled workers are underway, he said.
The Port of Long Beach, which with the Port of
Los Angeles handles two-thirds of all West Coast
trade, does not foresee the expanded canal as a
threat to its business.
“We’re projecting within the next
ten or 15 years a doubling or tripling of our cargo,
so if some of it goes through the canal, it may
not affect the port,” said Art Wong, spokesman
for the Port of Long Beach.
Trinidad
Guardian
Thursday 6th September, 2007
Copyright
©2007 Trinidad
Guardian . All Rights Reserved.
