Nicaragua Gives Chinese Firm Contract To Build Alternative To Panama Canal

McGruber writes with this news from late last week: "The Guardian is reporting that Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The new route will be a higher-capacity alternative to the 99-year-old Panama Canal, which is currently being widened at the cost of $5.2bn. Last year, the Nicaraguan government noted that the new canal should be able to allow passage for mega-container ships with a dead weight of up to 250,000 tonnes. This is more than double the size of the vessels that will be able to pass through the Panama Canal after its expansion, it said."

Comments

Re:Competition

[ShanghaiBill]

What's to stop Costa Rica or Columbia joining in?

1. Mountains
2. Water to operate the locks to get over those mountains.
Panama and Nicaragua both have relatively low hills/mountains, and large lakes at sufficient altitude to supply water for the locks.
Costa Rica and Colombia do not.

A little over three decades ago, I was a young Marine, and spent several months in Panama. We provided security for the Gatun dam and locks. It was very interesting to watch the ships step up and down through the locks. We conducted patrols in the surrounding rainforest. It was the most beautiful forest I have ever seen. There were trees almost as big as sequoias, and spots where the canopy were so dense that it was almost dark on the forest floor. The birds, butterflies and flowers all had dazzling colors. But it seemed like everything had thorns or some goo that would blister skin, and there were lots of mosquitoes, leeches, and other bloodsucking bugs.

Re:it's too wide

[Dunbal]

Of course China is being strategic. I live in Costa Rica, where Xi Jinping just visited before going to the US, and right next to Nicaragua. China has been very generous to these small latin countries, donating stadiums, highways and bridges. Like the US used to do back in the bad old days. The US nowadays though only threatens. Threatens will sanctions, threatens with cutting aid programs, etc. Guess who is popular and who isn't in latin America now? China has pretty much bought Africa and S. America. I wonder where the US seeks to expand its economy in the future - oh yeah, they don't make anything anymore anyway.

I hope it materialises

[ArgonautThief]

I work for a ship owner and order my vessels to transit via Panama quite often. To transit one of our smaller vessels (~30,000 DWT) it costs ~USD$90,000.00 and is one of the major costs calculated on our voyages, especially on a bad economic market. Despite the fact that ship owners are faced with a bad market, the PCA (Panama Canal Administration) keeps needlessly inflating the costs to transit at least once or twice per year. Our larger vessels can easily cost ~USD$200,000.00 and more to transit. The industry has long been awaiting some competition to mitigate these over-inflated costs and it is high time it materialised.