Panama Canal in crisis

Hawkeye10 said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1706188757982937341

Giving it to Panama who turned operations over to the Chinese has turned out very badly for us. The claim is drought, but that is pretty clearly BS...this is likely poor water management either by incompetence or design.
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The lake has always had a couple dozen freighters in it waiting to go one way or another. There is nothing terribly crowded about that picture, it's always looked like that. Same with the Gulf or the Pacific, always been hundreds waiting.
Panama c 1.JPG
 

The situation continues to get worse. The problem is blamed on global warming but the actual main problem is that the new canal was built without proper water supply. It was possible to get enough water, but for political reasons it was not done. There has been some speculation on my grapevine that the Han had a lot to do with the creation of this problem, but whether this failure was on purpose is not known. Increasingly ships are either going around South America or are going via the Suez Canal...adding massive costs, transit times, and tying up fleets.
 
As things stand today building the new locks was a huge mistake, the situation would be much better today if Panama had done nothing...they spent a shit ton of money to go in reverse.

Gee, where have I heard that before?
 
The incident comes at a time when the Suez Canal is experiencing record volumes and is under increased pressure as vessels have begun to divert from the Panama Canal while the attacks in the Red Sea are threatening traffic. In November, the Suez Canal Authority reported new records in the number of vessels and tonnage passing through the canal.

Last month, ship traffic was up more than four percent in the Suez Canal versus November 2022, with a total of 2,264 ships making the transit compared to 2,171 ships a year earlier, or an increase of 93 vessels. Net tonnage was up more than eight percent to reach a total of 135.5 million tons, compared to 125.2 million tons in November 2022.
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https://maritime-executive.com/arti...disrupted-after-one-containership-hits-bridge

The incident being a container ship hitting a bridge after rudder failure it is claimed. The canal is back to normal operations, or a few hours from.
 
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