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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...

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.

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...

On the face of it, America has little to fear from China's new deal to upgrade Cuba's power grid. The countries are already firm allies via their Communist leaders, Havana is under a diplomatic and economic embargo from Washington, and all efforts to mend ties between the two ended when Obama left office. But scratch the surface and what emerges is a picture of Chinese economic dominance in America's backyard that would be enough give any president sleepless nights. In fact, the deal with Cuba - signed this week as part of China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative - is...

A late 19th century idea has been resurrected to build a new canal in Nicaragua, at the same time Panama is planning to widen its own canal. Nicaraguan officials say next week they will announce their $20 billion proposal to build a canal linking the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans that would accommodate ships too large to use the Panama Canal, according to the Los Angeles Times. If it meets with the necessary approval by Nicaragua's Congress, the project would be a joint public-private venture financed by unnamed investors, Lindolfo Monjarretz, a spokesman for Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos, told the...

The Panama Canal, one of the major shipping routes through which 40 percent of container goods sold in America travels, currently has a 21-day wait time for ships attempting to make the passage. And the situation will only get worse before it gets better. The number of vessels waiting to sneak between North and South America currently stands at 154. The traffic jam is thanks to a severe drought that has afflicted the area since this Spring. About $270 billion in cargo travels through the canal every year... snip Not only are reservations for making it through the canal cut...

Panama City (AFP) – The drought-hit Panama Canal will maintain restrictions on the passage of ships for one year, a measure that has already led to a marine traffic jam as boats line up to enter the waterway linking two oceans. The canal is facing a shortage of rainwater needed to transfer ships through locks that function like water elevators, an engineering marvel that moves six percent of the world's maritime commerce up and over the isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The canal's sub-administrator Ilya Espino, told AFP that unless heavy rains fall in the next three months,...

John Hay was President Lincoln's personal secretary, a position that began nearly five decades of public service. A diplomat who served multiple Administrations from Lincoln to Roosevelt, he was a central figure in defining the U.S. foreign policy that would be the basis of the United States role on the world stage in the twentieth century.This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for...

David McCullough, who was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past, died on Sunday at home in Hingham Mass. He was 89. The death was confirmed by his daughter Dorie Lawson. Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (2001). He received National Book Awards for “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal” (1977) and “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family. Deep...

Nicaraguan dream to rival Panama's trade route Price of Central American ambition: $25bn and 10 years' construction over 175 miles Rupert Widdicombe in Managua Monday October 20, 2003 The Guardian (UK) Multi-billion dollar plans to create a rival to the 90-year-old Panama canal by linking a network of rivers and cutting through the jungle of central America are being backed by the goverment of Nicaragua. The new waterway - being proposed by a public private partnership called the Grand Canal Foundation - will cost an estimated $25bn (£15bn) and take 10 years to build. Its proponents say it would turn...

China poised to take over U.S. base at Ecuador's invitation Ecuador’s president has offered the Chinese government an airbase currently serving as one of the last U.S. military outposts in South America. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said during his recent visit to China that he would offer Beijing a lease on the Manta Airport, the presidential website reported last week. Currently, Manta is used by U.S. military forces for operations. The contract is up in 2009 and Correa will not renew it, a transport and public works ministry communications official told BNamericas. Correa said access to the air base is...

Yesterday on Fox News, my father claims he caught a headline on the scroll that said a boat had been boarded off Panama under suspicion of carrying WMDs.