Word: panamax
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Dates: during 2006-2006
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...plan calls for adding a third set of locks, wide enough to serve the supersize, post-Panamax vessels--those carrying more than 5,000 20-ft.-long containers--that many consider the future of commercial-cargo shipping. The canal's Old World competitor, Egypt's Suez Canal, can already accommodate the bigger vessels. A resized Panama Canal could be a boon to U.S. ports on the Gulf and East coasts, which currently handle post-Panamax cargo directly to and from Asia only via the lengthier Suez route. Says Gary LaGrange, CEO of the Port of New Orleans: "This will...
Still, the biggest problem is traffic jams: more than 14,000 ships transit the canal each year, stretching its outdated capacity. And a growing share of that freight can't cross Panama at all. By 2010, the number of post-Panamax vessels in the global commercial fleet is expected to jump 74%, to about 700, and by 2011, they will probably account for half the world's oceangoing commercial-cargo capacity, according to the World Shipping Council in Washington. The expansion design, approved by Panama's Congress last spring, would dig a new approach channel about five miles long just...
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