The shift happened on a Sunday in June 2016, and more than 25,000 people turned up to watch it. On June 26, the container ship COSCO Shipping Panama, 984.2 feet long and 158.3 feet across, slid through the Agua Clara locks on the Atlantic side and out through the Cocoli locks on the Pacific. It was the first “Neopanamax” vessel to use the Panama Canal’s new third set of locks, and it had sailed from Piraeus, Greece to be there.
“More than 100 years ago, the Panama Canal connected two oceans,” Canal Administrator and CEO Jorge L. Quijano said that day. “Today we connect the present and the future.”
What the money bought
The expansion carried a $5.25 billion price tag, Porthole Cruise and Travel reported. Construction began in 2007. The new locks sit at both ends of the waterway, 70 feet wider and 18 feet deeper than the originals, and crews dug out more than 150 million cubic meters of earth to build a second lane of traffic. The result doubled the canal’s cargo capacity.
Bigger chambers could have meant a bigger thirst for water. Instead, basins beside each lock recycle 60 percent of the water used for every transit, so the new locks use less water than the old ones despite their size.
Just days before the ceremony, ships were still running trials. On June 23 the 261 meter long Cosco Houston passed through the Cocoli locks while a floating gate closed behind it, gCaptain reported. The bulk carrier MV Baroque had been testing the Agua Clara side for weeks. Commercial vessels were due to follow a day after the inauguration, on June 27.
Why the size matters
The canal had long been the upper limit for most seagoing ships. The only other way from the Atlantic to the Pacific meant another 8,000 miles around the tip of South America. By opening day, the expanded canal already had 170 reservations for Neopanamax ships and commitments from two new liner services, according to Quijano.
The Panama Canal Authority said, on the eighth anniversary in June 2024, that the expansion was the largest enhancement since the canal opened in 1914. It also opened the route to 90 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas vessels for the first time. More than 25,000 vessels have used the Neopanamax locks since 2016. Between October 2023 and May 2024 alone, 1,799 vessels transited the expanded canal, and 1,123 of them, or 62.4 percent, were container ships.
The new locks were first expected to handle ships of up to 12,600 twenty-foot equivalent units, but operating experience pushed past that. The authority listed the CMA CGM Zephyr at 16,285 TEU and the Ever Max at 17,312 TEU among the larger ships to get through.
Not everything has been smooth. On that same anniversary the authority said it was still managing the effects of a drought and shifting water levels at Gatun and Alhajuela lakes. It raised the maximum authorized draft from 46 to 47 feet and added a booking slot to bring daily Neopanamax transits to 35 from August 5.
Sources
- Expanded Panama Canal Opens to Largest-Ever Ships – Porthole Cruise and Travel
- Photos: Test Transits Continue as Panama Prepares for Opening of Expanded Canal
- Panama Canal Celebrates Eighth Expansion Anniversary – Panama Canal Authority
