PANAMA CANAL UPDATE: The New "BIG DIG"

[Panama City, Panama, March 30th, 2012, Report by Attorney Charles Jerome Ware]

The multi-billion dollar shipping industry has outgrown the almost 100-year-old Panama Canal, which was started by the French in 1880 and completed by the United States in 1914. Therefore, the Panama Canal Authority is adding a much larger 3rd canal lane with wider, deeper, and longer locks to accommodate much larger ships.

The 51-mile long canal in the country of Panama connects the Atlantic Ocean (by way of the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean. Considered to be one of the largest, most dangerous, and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal makes it possible for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans more safely and in half the time previously needed before its completion by the Americans in 1914.

The new, ongoing 8-year, $5.25 billion third-lane construction project will eventually add three 1,400-foot-long, 60-foot-deep chambers to each end of the 51-mile route, and substantially increase lucrative and key commercial passages between Asia (principally China with its new giant ships) and the Eastern United States.

[also see, Fortune Magazine, April 30th, 2012, page 13]