Transport – Expanded Panama Canal opens – Süddeutsche.de

Direct from the dpa news channel

Panama City (dpa) – After nine years of construction, the extended channel between the Atlantic and Pacific is opened in Panama was. The “Cosco Shipping Panama” took the first ship the removed waterway.

After entering through the Atlantic locks the freighter was about eight hours later expected on the Pacific side. The expansion of the second most important after the Suez Canal waterway in the world had become necessary because more and larger ships to be built. The mega project has cost about 5.25 billion US dollars.

In the future, can the so-called Post-Panamax class freighters with 14 000 containers travel along the canal. So far, only vessels with a maximum of 4,400 containers were funneled.

The extension of the channel was “a historic event for Panama, the region and the world”, Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela said at the opening ceremony of the new locks of Agua Clara in Colon on the Atlantic side. Varela congratulated the 40,000 workers who had participated in the mega project. He also reminded people who had died in accidents during construction.

Following enlargement can again 96 percent of all ships that are traveling on the high seas, be channeled through the Panama Canal. The channel management expects a doubling of cargo throughput from the current 300 million tons per year to 600 million tons. Also Tanker example for LPG can now choose the cost- and time-saving route through the Central American isthmus.

Overshadowed was the day of a collision between a tractor and a private boat on the Pacific side of the canal, at the 19 people were injured as the canal authority announced. The accident was not directly linked to the festivities.

At the ceremony in Colón was attended by representatives of the shipping industry as well as over 60 international delegations. Hundreds of onlookers watched a fireworks display and the entrance of the “Cosco Shipping Panama” in the morning (local time). The cargo ship was expected for the closing ceremony around eight hours later at the locks of Cocolí near Panama City on the Pacific side.

“I’ve often driven through the Panama Canal, but to be the captain of the first ship which happens to developed the Panama canal, is unrivaled, “captain Jew Rodrigues had said before the departure of the Greek Piraeus.

the workers had cleared 150 million cubic meters of earth and rubble in recent years and twelve million tons of cement and 192 000 tons of steel installed.