@@jtgdthe water ONLY flows in a downhill direction; no water gets pumped up… and that is the problem during a drought. I’m flabbergasted that they did not consider extreme drought during the addition of the wider locks. SMH 🤦🏻♂️ Droughts have destroyed entire civilizations, like the Maya.
Eso sí, con todas las de la ley, los canales sirven para paliar con cargamentos de toda índole, hacia países hermanos, para que desafíen y reten hacia los enemigos políticos de toda especie, cambiando todas las actitudes, mentalidades, posturas y retóricas hacia latinoamerica entera en general,de cabo a rabo,de ahora en adelante.
Eventually, they'll need to build a isolated Canal from the freshwater supply and use ocean water. And save the freshwater for the locals and environmental
5 days is a miscalculation . 5 days is nothing, now there is anything between 10 and 20 days waiting, yet you are right that nobody really considering the fresh water reserves. It’s all about money, proof of that is the Panama Canal Authority changed the way bookings and auctions are done since last year, and this has immediately increase their income for these 2 concepts by almost double in the first month of 2023 compared with the previous year.
The five days mentioned was a huge error. Even looking at the map when they displayed it, it was obviously much more than 5 extra days to go around the South American continent
As someone who has transited the cannal on oil taker ships in 2012,13,14. Whenever we arrived Panama we were always asked to be at anchorage whether it was near the Gatun locks or Ballboa. Ive only had canal transit on arrival just once. I always thought the water used for the locks was pumped through tanks and managed the equilibrium of water. The other issue i found with the video is me being a navigator on the ship (The person who would plan the root) those days i knew it would take us 1 week from US to the canal. If we went round via the cape horn it would take us more than a month keeping in mind the oil takers, bulk carriers,generally top out at 15kts(only container vessels and cruise ships do 22kts) and even with container ships it would definitely take more than 2 weeks to go around. Its just the time that plays. The problem is the ship charterer dont consider the waiting time when initially planning. Chateres pay that huge canal fee for transit so they keep getting business with the clients and make up the money solwly. If ships have efficient engine's they would go the longer way no problems.
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience! How much would you say is the fuel cost per tonne of cargo on 1000mls route? I've just chosen arbitrary numbers to have a geral idea of the costs. Asking this because I worked in refineries as a contractor and I was told that the heavy oil remaining from the distillation would often be a burden if it weren't for the shipping industry, so I always thought shipping companies get it very cheap. At the same time I've seen those huge engines and I'm aware they use tonnes of it in a very short time.
@@pomodorino1766The shipping of oil is built into the price of the oil. Sure it uses a lot of oil, but compared to the alternative it's still cheaper. The US sends billions of tones of scrap metal overseas for recycling because it's cheaper to ship using oil than recycling in the US. While on the same it's still cheaper to sit on millions of shipping containers than shipping them back to where they came from. Go figure that one and let me know!
Well, it does sound weird. I mean, wouldn't recicling containers be more profitable than recycling scrap metal? Surely we miss something in the equation.
I thought Cape Horn, Chile (and the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa) were constantly under threat of severe storms and currents, because of the Southern Ocean (around Antarctica). So… it’s NOT just a matter of time and fuel. It is ALSO a matter of risk. I’m sure there are PLENTY of shipwrecks at those two capes. I’ll bet there are insurance exclusions for those two routes as well.
The Panama Canal’s issue is their management. They refuse to take on the cost of pumping water up hill. Instead, once the water reaches the lowest locks on either side, it’s lost to the ocean. Yes, the new lanes use water conservation methods to reduce the amount of water they release into the ocean but that still drains significant amounts of fresh water into the ocean
The question is where the power to pump the water up would come from. The hydroelectric dams that are the canal's water supply are also the canal's power supply. Since operating the locks and mules runs on this power, there will never be enough power to pump all the water back. Then there is all the other power uses, like running the cities.
@@markhemsworth2670 The costs is not really an issue. These companies has no trouble pilling all the costs back to the consumer. The issue with this idea is answered @ 2:14. The water is already saltwater once it mixed with the water that came in with the ship.
Very informative video. Now I can understand why my work is slow here in Houston, TX. I gone from doing 4-5 loads a week to 1-2 loads making it very difficult to survive.
So at 01:00 they say that the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 meant 5 days could be saved compared to sailing "around the tip of South America". Why would any modern ship 100 years later spend 20 days waiting to pass the canal? The 400k$ fee is probably lower than the alternative fuel cost, but time is money, too, right?
When it first opened they saved 5 MONTHS. Classic WSJ editing mistake. It saves about 8,000 miles, a fully loaded container ship can travel 335 miles at an average speed (saving 23 days), a tanker gets about 240 (33 days), grain ship gets about 265 (30 days). So it would be faster to just wait a couple weeks, and save money on fuel and other crew expenses.
Panamanian here, yes, deforestation is massive, the corrupt government only wants millionaire contracts like an open-pit mining contract in a district near the canal basin; crooked politicians only want money from those millionaire contracts....
I'm surprised there was no discussion about issues related to possibly recycling the water. As discussed in the comments, there is a problem that the fresh water gets mixed with salty water brought in by the ships as it is used in a lock. There is the issue of power if used water were pumped into special ponds or tanks. But moving to a more circular economic-resource model seems the long-run solution, in comparison to depleting finite freshwater resources.
@@violetadan4051 Ok, I'll bite, i hope you're not just a troll. Why is it unrealistic? Intuitively, I'm pretty sure the cost of going more circular would be completely uneconomic, but why couldn't it become more economic in the medium or long term? If intermittent renewable energy were so plentiful that Panama was curtailing it for lack of utility-scale storage, would using the energy to pump into ponds or tanks not be economically comparable to pumped hydro? Citations of reliable references would be welcome in any reply.
Fascinating journalism. I never imagined the canal was not a closed loop. Even watching the diagram it seems self evident to flow from one to the next and back. Poor vision and infrastructure management upfront does not mean it’s too late to correct. Fix the system rather than compound strain and destruction of the ecosystem with more dams and consumption.
Why lose that much fresh water with each transit to the ocean, why not pump it back up? Just needs sufficient pumping capacity so it doesn't take too long. Or am I getting something wrong?
For every ship passing 120 million gallons of water is lost to sea, that's ~3,600 million gallons every day. (considering 30 ships per day) you need pumping capacity of ~2.5 million gallons per minute, every day, whole year. just imagine the $$$ required for it to happen.
For every ship passing 120 million gallons of water is lost to sea, that's ~3,600 million gallons every day. (considering 30 ships per day) you need pumping capacity of ~2.5 million gallons per minute, every day, whole year. just imagine the $$$ required for it to happen.
In 1900, digging an 85 foot deep trench might have been harder than a series of locks. In 2023, how about digging the passage deeper and making it an entirely salt water waterway?
I have the same question. That idea wasn’t even mentioned in this article. I would have also liked to see much more information about the environmental costs of the different options. We need to start identifying those and pointing those out if we want the next generations to have a standing chance at living a healthy life in a clean environment. The WSJ needs to up its game.
It goes through a large lake, so they'd either have to build a (massive) dam between the lake and canal or drain their freshwater reservoir. Seems like a bigger waste of freshwater (in drought conditions) to me (5.2 km³ in the lake vs 0.0002 km³ per ship passing through the locks).
DID I HEAR WRONG? - I distinctly heard the announcer say that taking the Panama Canal saves a ship 5 DAYS over going all the way around the South American continent. Only 5 DAYS to go around the entire continent?? Later, we are told that the Suez Canal saves ships 2 WEEKS of sailing around the African continent. Why the big difference?
Back when my dad did dredging operations in the canal, the jungle that supplies the water was healthy. When Panama took over the canal zone, the protection of the jungle ended. Illegal harvesting of jungle resources and building in the jungle destroyed the delicate jungle balance. At the same time, population growth increased demand on water. Then the new wider canal increased demand on water. So is the drought man made?
It's greed all over the place. More ships, more money, so let's increase the capacity. Let's connect more rivers to the system. I don't give a f.... if the global trade will suffer. And according to law they can't make profit on that transit, so how come they auction the slots? Greed. It's just disgusting.
For sure there's a man-made element. This by the way, is the problem with our current, unregulated version of capitalism. Any money, by any means. F the land, water, people, ecosystem, animals, etc.
@@BoogieBoogsForever “our … version of unregulated capitalism” Either “our” refers to Central American, or if you mean the US then that’s a clear declaration you’ve never built anything anywhere in the US, ever. Any large project is years in the making, with millions$ of env studies. Forget about any new private anything anymore near water. New mine, 15 years. The regulation is intense, and expensive to navigate, and can have criminal penalties. In the end, what good is regulation if most people like you think there is none.
@@BoogieBoogsForever capitalism creats, socialism distributes. Capitalism built the canal and kept it running. There were a lot of abuses of people in building and operating the canal which was proceeded by stealing Panama from Columbia. My dad said we should not have given the canal to Panama, but the whole country should have been returned to Columbia. The canal should have been continued to run as it was, a self sustaining corporation with shares owned by the builder (the United States) and Columbia. Eventually Columbia could buy out the US shares or the shares sold to investors. The worst possible program would be any government running the Canal. The other possibility would be to build a sea level canal in Nicaragua.
It wasn’t mentioned that new locks were added to the Panama Canal in recent years which has allowed larger ships to transit the canal and altered the very definition of a ‘Panamax’ vessel. It was odd that there was no comparison of the voyage costs that owners (mostly bulk) use when deciding whether to use the canal. Ofc, much of the video content from the WSJ seems to have been dumbed down although the competition is usually worse.
“Panamax” continues to be used to describe ships that would fit through the original locks of the Panama Canal. They didn’t just scrap all the older ships that day.
“New Panamax” (or “Neopanamax”) is what describes the limitations of ships for the new locks. Long story short, 20% longer and more than 2x the weight. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panamax
O:58. “ Cargo ships to save about five days traveling between Atlantic and Pacific. It’s a lot more than five days saved by not going around Cape Horn.
Good Afternoon Dr Mercogliano, I read this article yesterday. As I'm driving my grandson home from school today I asked him if he thought about what he wanted for Christmas yet?? Surprisingly he hasn't given it much thought. Seeing a post yesterday listing about 154 ships waiting in the que, I 🤔 told him he may want to start.
For every ship passing 120 million gallons of water is lost to sea, that's ~3,600 million gallons every day. (considering 30 ships per day) you need pumping capacity of ~2.5 million gallons per minute, every day, whole year. just imagine the $$$ required for it to happen.
Start with a small trebuchet and launch the containers over the mountain, then work up to sending entire ships from ocean to ocean via the beautifully simple catapult design called trebuchet.
But then you need an empty ship on the other side. Not to mention how much it costs every time you handle _one_ of those containers (and the Panamax ships have tens of thousands)
Well if your company ships just containers, then you can just have two separate fleets of vessels (one on each respective side of the canal) and transfer the cargo with trains. Then your ships no longer need to use the canal. And you don't even need more ships than currently does, as the total sailing distance has not changed.
My best guess would be the time needed to unload and reload those containers 2x. You'd need several rail lines and stack containers if you'd want to be efficient. Anything is possible of course and I think it would be best for countries using the canal to help invest in better methods that would improve time and resource use.
Too bad the Nicaragua canal that was supposed to begin construction in the late 2010’s was never built, it would have been very helpful right now to alleviate this situation.
If the ships are idle, waiting for 20+ days, and from your video, going through the Panama Canal only saves them five days, wouldn't it make more sense for most of these ships to bypass the Panama Canal today?
This affects the Panamax canals not the new one, but a lot of ships still use the smaller ones. They need a couple of nuclear desalination plants to feed water into the lake, maybe from each shore. They can add it to the lake, or upstream, so it doesn't taste bad when it is used for public residential supply. Ultimately, they are going to need to update their pump system to recycle the fresh-water, because this is a climate issue that will continue to get worse over the next several decades. As usual, the poor farmers are the last ones to be considered in these problems. Same thing happens in The U.S. and China when they have too much water. They open the dams, and a lot of people are displaced or killed.
based nuclear desalination enjoyer also the fact that theyre losing water from the locks in general is a design flaw, they have some water saving basins there, but obviously not enough for every lock if water is still lost to sea
@@vincentgrinn2665 there always has to be water lost on the last lock each way. when the water goes down to sea level the locks open. the ship leaves . if they try to pump that water back it will have a mixture of fresh and sea water
@@zonian1966 asbestos insulation 'worked fine' for over 100 years as well just because it works doesnt mean its good just because it sucks doesnt mean its obsolete
@@ronblack7870 hm yeah thats true even if each lock is a closed loop between the lock itself and their own retention ponds, each time you open the lock the water will spread between the two though it would dilute any seawater each time, wonder how much salt would actually make it through
The problem is not the supply of fresh water(just pump it to the top lock not the lake). It is pumping the water from the ocean to the lock (((120 million (US gallons / (m^3))) / 4) * (.272 kwh)) / (48 minutes) = 38GW before ineffeciencies.
Not a word that a second canal mas opened recently. That increases the use of water. There has been droughts before in Panama canal with no repercussions. Look for the historic chart of chart of rains.
I had no idea that the canal is supplied by fresh water. I just assumed that it was using sea water. Seeing that fresh water is becoming a critical factor in the world, I don’t see much hope for the future of the canal……or the people of Panama.
Using sea water is even more of a problem. How do you get the seawater to the top lock? (((120 million (US gallons / (m^3))) / 4) * (.272 kwh)) / (48 minutes) = 38GW before ineffeciencies.
I'm sorry but with limitless ocean water on both sides of the canal and fresh water being scarce, why isn't anybody talking about using ocean water or recycling fresh water instead? My guess is if these canals were being constructed today, these are exactly the logical questions that engineers would be trying to figure out...which were absent from this video. What am I missing here?...
I didn't know that some VLCC and ULCC ships are required to offload some cargo spots until they complete their transit then reload on the other side. The wait alone for transit is long enough, this issue is slowing down the transportation of the goods transiting the Canal.
5:33 just out of curiosity - what is the YoY comp of the delivery times? Broadly, shipping is a seasonal business with high volumes end of summer / early fall.
That Canal across Nicaragua us looking better and better. But on a serious note, Panama is a very high income country on the world stage, and among its neighbors its populace has enough wealth that the disparity between them and Hondurans is like Qatar to Mexico. This drought isn’t the first one, and the use of Gatun Lake’s water in the locks isn’t new. So, I ask, why didn’t panama build desalination plants to provide freshwater into the lake? They absolutely can afford it, and there would be nothing stopping them from building some solar panel farms, wind turbines, and even small nuclear power plants to power these plants.
Caused by Stimmy Checks purchasing custom wheels and tires from overseas.... they never helped the local tire shops. Now those shops do not exists anymore.
Why don't they just pump sea water up until the penultimate lock, dump the water back into the ocean and just use fresh water from the lake just for the last transit???
They didn't clarify - why do they insist on fresh water? Why can't they build infrastructure to utilise salt water which is much closer and more plentiful. If corrosion is a concern, then mix pre-treat the salt water and/or mix with fresh water.
I know desalination plants have there problems, but i would think this is a case where they would be if great use and the cost of them wouldn't be as much of an issue considering the financial strain the alternative would cause
Nice high school project hext level of reporting :) Among the many omissions and errors: 7:05 shows the wrong cape, no mention of the expansion project, new locks, new Panamax, no clarifications if rain levels changed and if so then How much, comparison of fresh water consumption by the canal vs other uses etc.
They could build a storage basin at the top that is constantly filled with seawater, then combine that seawater with the lake water into the canal when needed. This could save quite a lot of freshwater. Am I wrong ?
@@Sam-gs7yb If you mean Mexican railway the Americans already have a trans continental railway connecting it's east and west coast and a lot of their cargo is transported by it but sea lines are cheaper and if USA wanted to use Mexico they could put their cargoes on their own railway.
@@faridjafari6356 except this a reallyshort distance corridor of 192miles that connects two ports that are currently being upgraded, as well as the trains, tracks. Special delivery cargo ships and at least 10 business parks with fiber, gas lines etc. Unlike Panama which is just for transport they plan on adding aggregate value to ship to US or Asia. Look up the project interoceanic corridor of the isthmus of Tehuantepec. It’s very advanced and they have being receiving tenders from foreign and local companies that what to set up shop.
Panama canal is mostly important trade route. in the connection the Atlantic ocean and Pacific ocean.. Also this is canal most busy canal in the all South ameerica and central ameerica
For those that keep asking, you can't use sea water for obvious reasons, and the biggest is salination. The canal structure and the locking system is almost entirely metal. Sea water would destroy the whole thing from corrosion not to mention the impact of several invasive organisms and micro marine life. Take the Golden Gate Bridge for example. they can barely keep that thing from becoming an entire rust bucket from the evaporation of salt water from the pacific so imagine if the canal locking system was constantly submerged in salt water. Short answer is it's not feasible.
25 months Not 25 years..!! The Mega Vadhavan port(Dahanu, Maharashtra, India ) (& other project opportunities like Mumbai Delhi expressway, Bullet train and many other projects are set TIME bound ) construction &development (road and railway line) last mile connectivity has gained immense momentum,attention, respect & kept on ultra fast track clearing and setup(Uninterrupted and Non stop working on tight and strict completion time ) .as a result the areas around it are witnessing a heavy demand for warehouse ,godown.,commercial parks & corporate offices . Locals from Mumbai and nearby regions are already welcoming the move . Locals are eager, excited & enthusiastic for the projects as the RETURNS are promising for the years to come.
Why are all the comments focusing on the 5 days thing? They state in the video that it saves 5 days on average and later on state it can save up to a few weeks depending on the route. The point of the video is the drought affecting trade routes.
The real problem of Panama canal is NOT the drought, but ENERGY. Because it is NOT economical viable to recycle the water by pumping the water back to the waterway. Solar electricity is the best bet, but there are obstacle on political wills due to too various stakeholder that affected by the investment.
If you can't Pump into the lake, make reservoirs near the top lock, then pump seawater into the reservoir, from there into the lock and let it cascade down. Problems like these are always solveable, its mostly just a question of economics ... how long and how expensive have the delays to be to warrand such works.
Are you telling me we cant spend a billion in a process that takes the salt out of the water and simply put it back in the lake???? I find that hard to believe.
The new larger locks are supposed to be recycling water instead of dumping it. That could be done in the old locks with changes. Where are the plans for a 2nd canal?
