Even after a year of unveiling the expanded Panama Canal to the World. It still remains small for the large supertankers to travel through the narrow lane.
Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar who released a research report titled ‘The impact of the expansion on energy shipments so far has varied by commodity’ conveyed, “Flows of liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, and liquefied natural gas, or LNG, traveling south through the canal from the U.S. Gulf to South America and Asia have increased substantially. At the same time, transits of crude oil and refined products through the canal have declined”.
Dependent on Panama Canal:
The new LNG tankers that set sail to Asia from the Gulf Coast can pass through the Panama Canal to avoid the thousands of miles long journey around the southern tip of South America but oil tankers have unfortunately run out of luck.
According to the Panamanian Government, Over the nine months leading into June 2016, crude represented less than 1 percent of the oversized ship traffic moving through the Canal. LNG represented 9 percent of traffic, with container ships the largest share of traffic at 48 percent.
Large tankers squeeze through the Canal:
Fielden says, “The new canal locks can accommodate larger LPG and LNG vessels many of which have been brought into service specifically to take advantage of the expansion. Yet the canal still can’t accommodate the largest crude tankers and smaller refined-product vessels that require time-consuming retrofitting before making their first passage”.
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Source: Houston Chronicle
