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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."
The story is short on details, the Spanish language op ed referred to in TFA indicates the canal would run through Lake Nicaragua. This route has been considered since before the US-dug canal through Panama. I could potentially be a sea-level canal, which would be a major plus, but which would radically alter the Lake. Either way, it'd be a big deal for shipping and save thousands of miles and tons of fuel for ships bigger than whatever they're calling the latest "Panamax." It seems to me the ports of New Orleans and Mobile in the US would benefit, perhaps also Atlantic ports in Europe.
I am not a crackpot.
I've been waiting to hear about this for years. It should be quite a project. Wikipedia has a map for those interested.
Proverbs 21:19
It's a shame China didn't consult with you first then. You could have saved them a lot of trouble by telling them it was stupid. So in order to allow super tankers, which are too big for the Panama Canal, where would have built an additional, wider canal?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
not to mention how stupid it is to completely cut your country in half.
Yeah, that MIssisippi river forces people to ride thousands of miles further to take their horses from Mississippi to Texas. Oh wait, they've been building bridges and fording rivers since before the colonial era?
Sure, it is a longer route than Panama, but I suspect the shipping volumes are large enough that it might be profitable. China is likely viewing this strategically - they've been taking the long view far more than the US in recent years, with the exceptions of their environmental policy and the US willingness to invest in blowing things up.
Look at a map of Nicaragua. It's at least twice if not 3x as wide as Panama at its thinnest point. What an unbelievably stupid idea, not to mention how stupid it is to completely cut your country in half.
In the US, our country is "completely cut in half" by a naturally occurring canal, if you will. We've used a technologies known as the "bridge" and "ferry" to deal with that. Nicaragua could probably do the same.
Also note that part of that distance through Nicaragua is already water: Lake Nicaragua. Every plan ever for a canal through that region -- going back to the 19th century -- has included the lake in the route.
I am not a crackpot.
If it only takes them a hundred years and a trillion dollars it'll be a miracle. And here's a tip: bring in the French first. After they fail everyone will want to help you out because apparently nothing's more satisfying than beating the French at something.
You realise if the pull this off technically Costa Rica will become an island.
A china that is committed to trading with the world is not waging war. This is about shipping routes from China to Europe bypassing unstable africa and an even more unstable middle east. Its also about ships such as the maersk Triple E class 165,000 tons which is too big for any US port to handle but can be easily handled by ports in china and europe. This would shock americans but the Chinese of 700 years had ships bigger than any in Europe that could travel farther and were more advanced with magnetic compasses and watertight compartments.
So who's going to go ballistic over the loss of a monopoly?
Let's wait and see how long it takes them to actually build the damn thing, and at what cost. Go look at a map.
If you take that look, be sure to look closely. The plan is to utilize Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River, which connects it to the Caribbean. That leaves only 10 km of completely new canal (from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific), although the San Juan River also needs upgrades to make it navigable for larger ships. This is not a new idea, nor an implausible one - see the Wikipedia article.
Stephan
Since the lake is more than 100 feet above today's sea level, if it ever floods with salt water, there are not going to be many people left to worry about its ecology.
Now hitchhiker organisms riding on the bottoms of the ships or in their ballast tanks are a reasonable concern. We can assume that inspection and cleaning facilities will be set up on both sides of the Nicaragua canal, since this kind of contamination is a well known problem. I expect that the Panama Canal has been retrofitted by now-- although maybe it is being treated as a lost cause.
Will
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.
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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. - Albert Einstein