Free Republic

KEY POINTS Satellite imagery gives another perspective on the developing situation in Egypt’s Suez Canal, where a mega cargo container ship was turned sideways and stuck. Imagery captured on Tuesday by a Planet Labs’ Dove satellite showed the stranded ship, called the Ever Given, in the canal. Suez port agent GAC told Reuters that as of Wednesday morning, Ever Given had been partially refloated and moved against the bank of the canal. Satellite imagery captured on March 23, 2021 shows the cargo container ship Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal in Egypt. Planet Labs Satellite imagery gives another perspective on...

Port agent GAC said the stranded ship, Ever Given, had been partially refloated and moved alongside the canal bank.

An IDF Navy submarine crossed the Suez Canal last week as a direct message to Iran, Kan News reported Monday evening. Arab intelligence officials reportedly confirmed to Kan News that the Israeli submarine crossed the canal toward Iran visibly above water, in an act meant as a message to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The move was made during a more than usually tense time between Jerusalem and Tehran. It was made possible after receiving an approval from Egyptian authorities. According to Arab intelligence that confirmed the reports, the submarine passed the Red Sea and was making its way toward...

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) is set to lose over $10m in revenue from container lines routing vessels via the Cape of Good Hope rather than its waterway. According to new Alphaliner research, “the number of containerships that have opted to use the Cape route and bypass the Suez Canal has risen to a historic peace-time high,” including at least 20 sailings on the Asia-Europe, Europe-Asia and North America east coast-Asia trades. “A unique combination of a container tonnage surplus and rock-bottom bunker prices has increasingly prompted ocean carriers to avoid the canal – and thus its fees,” the analyst...

<p>Later that night, Holland America released a statement that it was working to facilitate the transit for the Zaandam and Rotterdam.</p> <p>“We are aware of reported permission for both Zaandam and Rotterdam to transit the Panama Canal in the near future. We greatly appreciate this consideration in the humanitarian interest of our guests and crew. This remains a dynamic situation, and we continue to work with the Panamanian authorities to finalize details,” Holland America’s statement read.</p>

West Coast Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose members earn average wages and benefits of $285,000 by raising labor hell, is facing existential risk from the widened Panama Canal. The San Francisco Chronicle described the 42,000 card-carrying International Longshore and Warehouse Union members that since 1934 has maintained iron-fisted control of all 29 West Coast commercial ports, "the aristocrats of the working class." ILWU full-time workers receive an average of $175,000 in annual wages, along with a non-wage benefits package costing more than $110,000 per active worker per year. Benefits include fully paid health care, employer 401(k) matching, 13 paid holidays,...

The LNG carrier Oak Spirit transits the Expanded Panama Canal with a cargo LNG loaded from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal. Photo Credit: Teekay Executives from U.S. LNG exporter Cheniere Energy met with representatives from the Panama Canal this week in Panama to discuss the waterway’s growing LNG vessel segment. (Underlines mine.) Since the opening of the Expanded Panama Canal in 2016, LNG has emerged as the fastest-growing segment for the waterway in part due to the United States emergence as a gas supplier to Asia and other global markets. To date, the Canal’s Neopanamax locks have transited more than 280...

Bolivian President Evo Morales met with German and Swiss officials in Bern, Switzerland, on December 14 to sign an agreement on building one of the largest infrastructure projects of the century—a coast-to-coast railroad across South America. The Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor, or “Panama Canal on Railway Tracks,” will stretch from the Pacific coast of Peru, through Bolivia, and across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the projected route is 2,333 miles. Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay also plan to add connection routes to the corridor. Germany and Switzerland will assist in the ambitious project’s construction and will also...

Link only (Bloomberg)

[Bloomberg] The expansion also coincided with a population boom that has made the south home to 10 of the 15 fastest growing cities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning there is a growing market for goods being imported. At the same time, manufacturing growth throughout the south means shipping lines also can pick up American-made exports to transport abroad.

BATH, Maine — The Bath-built USS Zumwalt, the first-in-class “stealth” destroyer that left the Bath shipyard on Sept. 7, broke down Monday night while passing through the Panama Canal and was towed by tugs through the locks toward the Pacific Ocean. The DDG 1000, the first of a class of three destroyers that cost an estimated $22 billion combined, “suffered an engineering casualty,” the Navy Times reported. The Zumwalt was towed through the locks to Rodman, a former U.S. military base.

The U.S. Navy’s newest littoral combat ship USS Montgomery has had its hull cracked for a second time after hitting a lock wall during a transit of the Panama Canal, the U.S. Navy has confirmed. The latest incident occurred Saturday, Oct. 29 during southbound transit of the Panama Canal’s old locks on its way to its homeport in San Diego

"A century after transforming global trade and markets, the Panama Canal is about to revamp world trade once again. On June 26 the canal is scheduled to reopen after a massive project costing more than $5 billion that will allow bigger ships to pass through the 102-year-old waterway, doubling cargo capacity. U.S.-based businesses are recognizing the new growth opportunities. Many logistics experts predict the expansion of the so-called Panamex may shift international trade routes, allowing ships to reach Asia from the U.S. Gulf Coast more than two weeks faster than going east through the Suez Canal." Excerpt; full story at...

A core sample pulled from the concrete of the Cocoli Locks where cracks and leaks have appeared does not bode well for the Panama Canal expansion project, which is on a strict deadline for completion in April 2016. The crack and subsequent leaks appeared recently in the concrete of one of the interior chambers of the new Cocoli Locks on the Pacific side of the waterway during testing of the new locks.

Watch the USS Theodore Roosevelt navigate through the new Suez Canal with all of its fighter jets on deck. It’s super cool because the aircraft carrier is so big and the water of the canal is so calm that it feels like the Earth is moving around the land formation that is the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The ISIS-linked “Sinai Province” terrorist group sank an Egyptian navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea near Gaza and Sinai. They claim to have fired a rocket at the ship, setting it on fire and sinking. Some news reports confirm this, but the Egyptian military says that there was only an exchange of gunfire that caused the ship to catch on fire. The attack comes just two weeks after Egypt said it was in a ‘state of war’ in northern Sinai, following July 1 when the same group conducted simultaneous coordinated terror attacks at 15 different locations in Sinai. According to...

A $50 billion canal to be built by a Chinese tycoon in Nicaragua would be deep enough to allow submarines to pass through undetected. Billionaire Wang Jing has spearheaded what is one of the biggest engineering projects in the world and is three times the size of any other canal, yet shipping forecasters don’t anticipate a need for such a route in terms of trading. Many believe that Wang, who has not disclosed who his investors are, may be backed by the Chinese Government who hope to get a foothold in the continent where business has traditionally been dominated by...

<p>Everything in the path of the proposed trans-oceanic canal in Nicaragua would have to be relocated. Churches. Cemeteries. Stockyards.</p> <p>As many as 28,000 people scattered in villages and towns face the likelihood that their lands would be expropriated. The government pledges they will be better off, living in new settlements with a bit of cash in their pockets. But skepticism abounds. Ranchers are angry. They’ve held 44 marches and rallies in the past nine months. A few events have turned violent.</p>

HOUSTON — Panama is well positioned to serve as a distribution hub for the liquefied natural gas that will power Central America in the future, the country’s officials told attendees at Houston’s Offshore Technology Conference on Tuesday morning. The biggest advantage the country has is its namesake canal, an overseas shortcut linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, panelists said at the breakfast talk. The canal is currently too small to handle LNG tankers, but a multi-billion dollar expansion is in the works that will allow all but the largest gas-carrying ships to pass. The massive construction project was interrupted by...

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) transits through the Suez Canal in this time-lapse video filmed April 6, 2015.