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Raghu Dayal

The world's three most important waterways — the Panama Canal, the Malacca Straits, and the Suez Canal — are planning expansions to facilitate the movement of bigger ships through the canals.

The three major waterways of critical importance for global maritime trade — the Panama Canal, the Malacca Straits, and the Suez Canal — are all busy planning for additional capacity, involving huge investments. They also struggle to cope with the growing menace of piracy and terrorism.

The Panama Canal has been carrying increasing volumes of imports from Asia, which previously landed in the US west coast ports and are now being carried through the Canal to the east coast. Some 14,000 vessels traverse the Canal annually from all parts of the world. Commercial transportation activities through the Canal represent approximately 5 per cent of the world trade.

Approximately 80 km long between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Panama Canal was cut through one of the narrowest saddles of the isthmus that joins North and South America. Officially opened on August 15, 1914 at an expenditure of $352,000,000, the Panama Canal project took 34 years to complete. Over 80,000 persons are estimated to have taken part in the construction.

Described the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Canal uses a system of locks- compartments with entrance and exit gates. The locks function as water lifts: they raise ships from the sea level (the Pacific or the Atlantic) to the level of Gatun Lake (26 metre above sea level); ships then sail the channel through the Continental Divide. The maximum moving dimensions for ships to transit the Canal are: 32.3 metre in beam; draft 12 metre in tropical fresh water; and 294.1 metre long.

Increase in traffic

The increasing number of post-Panamax ships will necessitate changes to the Canal, if it is to retain a significant market share. It is anticipated that, by 2011, about 40 per cent of the world's container ships will be too large for the present Canal. Close to 50 per cent of transiting vessels are already using the full width of the locks. An enlargement scheme similar to the 1939 Third Lock Scheme, to allow for a greater number of transits and the ability to handle larger ships, has been on the anvil.

This enlargement scheme, at a cost of $5.25 billion, was approved by the Government of Panama following a national referendum on October 22, 2006. The new lock chambers will allow transit of vessels with a beam of up to 49 metre, an overall length of up to 366 metre, and a draft of up to 15 metre, equivalent to a container ship carrying around 12,000 TEU. The project is designed to allow for an anticipated growth in traffic from 280 million PC/UMS tonnes in 2005 to nearly 510 million PC/UMS tonnes in 2025; the expanded Canal will have a maximum sustainable capacity of approximately 600 million PC/UMS tonnes per year. The new locks are expected to open for traffic in 2015.

Malacca Straits

The Straits of Malacca is one of the oldest and busiest shipping lanes in the world, serving as a primary conduit for the movement of cargo and people between Indo-European region and the rest of Asia and Australia. The littoral states of the Straits of Malacca are Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. The Straits, located between the coastline of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to the east and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the west, is 900 km at its widest point (about 350 km between Northern Sumatra and Thailand) and less than 3 km wide at its narrowest (between southern Sumatra and Singapore). At its shallowest, it has a depth of just 25 metre.

Linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Straits of Malacca is the shortest sea route between three of the world's most populous countries — China, India, and Indonesia. With the increase in economic activities in the East Asian region and the Pacific, the Malacca Straits is becoming ever-busier. More than 50,000 vessels per year transit the 621-mile (1000-km) Straits of Malacca. Eighty per cent of Japan's oil that comes from West Asia is transported via the Malacca Straits.

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), about 11 million barrels per day of petroleum currently passes through the Straits of Malacca. To skip the straits would force a ship to travel an extra 1500 km from West Asia. With Chinese oil imports from West Asia increasing steadily, the Straits of Malacca will assume further strategic importance in coming years.

Narrow channels, shallow reefs, thousands of tiny get-away islands, and slow traffic with some 900 commercial vessels passing through each day render the waters around Singapore, Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia vulnerable to piracy. The narrowest point of this shipping lane is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, which is only 1.5-mile wide at its narrowest point. This creates a bottleneck, with possibility of a collision, grounding, or oil spill.

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal averages about 8 per cent of the world shipping traffic. By 1955, approximately two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through the canal. Egypt's Suez Canal Authority's (SCA) reported receipts from the canal in July 2005 to May 2006 totalled $3,246 million.

About 60 metres wide at its narrowest, cutting through three lakes — Lake Manzala in the north, Lake Timsah in the middle, and the Bitter Lakes in the south — the Suez Canal extends from Port Said to Port Tawfiq and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez and thence with the Red Sea. The canal allows the passage of ships of up to some 150,000 tonnes displacement, with cargo. It permits ships of up to 16-metre draft to pass; improvements will increase this to 22 metre by 2010 to allow super tanker passage.

(The author is a former Managing Director of Concor.)

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