Panama Canal transit times fall

Michelle Wiese Bockmann - Wednesday 11 June 2008

Transit times at the canal has drastically eased. Transit times at the canal has drastically eased.
A THREE-month period of chronic congestion at the Panama Canal has drastically eased, with the backlog of vessels waiting to transit now at 36. 

As well as cuts to the lengthy queues, which peaked at 130 vessels, local agents said delays had been cut to between 36 to 48 hours, after exceeding more than 10 days. 

The Panama Canal Authority has also reduced the time it takes to transit the 80-km-long canal, after times blew out to average 53 hours in March, and rose by a third for the first three months of the year.
On Monday, the daily transit time was under 20 hours. 

Ship agents serving the Panama Canal said authorities had yet to provide a satifactory reason for delays, which had been widely attributed to an industrial dispute between the canal’s work force of 274 pilots. 

“We have been talking to the canal authority very closely and what they claim is that they had that minor repairs (to locks) in February that was aggravated by heavy arrivals and that carried on for two months or so,” said one agent, who declined to be identified. 

“I don’t know how accurate that information is exactly, as we all had suspicions on whether there was some other problem internally wtihin the Panama Canal Authority that was hampering the delays, there didn’t seem to be an official excuse for it. 

“Yes there were heavy arrivals during February and March but there was obviously something else that they wouldn’t come out and say. 

“I do think there was something going on the the pilots but as the canal authority said themselves, there is really no way of proving that. 

“We monitor all the arrivals every day and from past experience this has been the worst in my lifetime at least.” 

The Panama Canal has repeatedly denied agents’ claims that pilots embarked on work-to-rule measures which slowed down transits and aggravated queues during the busiest time of the year for the crucial trade artery. 

But agents outlined several small but timesaving work practices that pilots had stopped, such as providing advance notice of boarding ships at anchorages, which could allow captains to start engines in advance. 

Critical maintence work on the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks was postponed in early March after lane outages caused queues to rise sharply. 

“Factors like weather conditions, maintenance work, the mix in vessels arriving and the impact of peak season have attributed to the rise in Canal Water Time,” said ACP executive vice president of operations, Manuel Benítez in the operations report released earlier this week. 

“To reduce Canal Water Times we implemented several measures, including adding more equipment and personnel, postponing non-critical maintenance work and increasing the number of slots for vessels transiting without reservation.” 

During the first three months of 2008 transits through the canal fell 2% to 3,971, compared to the same period in 2007. Tonnage also dropped 2.6% to 78.4m tonnes.
Send to Colleague Printer Friendly Format Email the Editor