The Panama Canal Authority has announced a possible further reduction in the maximum number of daily transits allowed along the canal should drought problems persist.
The lack of rainfall has already led the Panama Canal Authority to reduce daily transits by 20%, to 32 per day through the waterway’s neopanamax locks. This has led to significant queues at both ends of the Canal.
The arrival in July of El Niño, the atmospheric warming phenomenon in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, has certainly made the situation worse, prompting the Authority to auction off some available transit slots, giving priority to vessels that had been waiting the longest to cross the canal.
The possible solution to the problem, however, is infrastructural and involves the building of a new reservoir that can preserve Lake Gatun’s water level, which provides the facility with the water it needs to operate the locks.
Today there are 132 ships currently waiting to transit.
Translation by Giles Foster