Panamanian president urges Canal consortium to stop waging media battle

PANAMA CITY, January 4th, 2016 (EFE) President Juan Carlos Varela said Saturday that the inauguration of a newly expanded Panama Canal would take place in May in the presence of several heads of state and government, while also calling on the consortium responsible for the third-locks project to stop waging a media battle with his government.

“Sometime in May 2016, our country will once again be the scene of a major international occurrence when we inaugurate the expanded canal,” Varela said in his state-of-the-nation address to the unicameral National Assembly.

“Very respectfully, I call on the contractors of the expansion project to engage in a dialogue with the Panama Canal Authority (a government agency known as the ACP) so the work can be concluded, to leave the legal claims in the hands of the competent authorities and to avoid media disputes that do nothing for the image of the contractors, the Canal Authority and the Republic of Panama,” Varela said.

He was referring to the recent trading of accusations in the media between the ACP and the GUPC consortium led by Spain’s Sacyr Vallehermoso, which blame one another for delays in completing the third set of locks.

ACP head Jorge Quijano says the expansion project will be completed some time in the second quarter of 2016 but that commercial operations will not necessarily begin immediately after the inauguration.

Evidence of significant cracks and leaks in the third set of locks was obtained by the press in September of last year. (ICR Archive)

The expanded waterway was initially to be completed in October 2014, but that date was pushed back due to, among other reasons, work stoppages, contractual disputes between the ACP and the GUPC and cracks in one of the new lock heads on the Pacific side.

The 80-kilometer (50-mile) canal, which was under U.S. control from 1904 until Dec. 31, 1999, currently handles nearly 6 percent of global trade.

Administrators launched the expansion project in 2007, including construction of a third set of locks that will enable the waterway to accommodate “post-Panamax” ships.

Those modern ships – used by the energy, and particularly the liquefied natural gas, industry – hold up to 12,000 20-foot-long containers and are three times bigger than what the canal can currently handle.

With the new set of locks, the canal will be able to handle up to 600 million tons of cargo annually, double its current capacity.

The more than $5.25 billion expansion, whose centerpiece is the third-locks project, is 96 percent complete.