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The Panama Canal has turn out to be so backlogged that the world’s largest operator of chemical tankers has determined to reroute its fleet to the Suez Canal.
London-based Stolt-Nielsen, which has a tanker division with 166 ships, is charging prospects further prices for the longer route, it stated in an electronic mail. A bottleneck on the Panama Canal resulting from low water ranges has prompted shippers to divert to Suez, the Cape of Good Hope, and even via the Strait of Magellan off the tip of South America.
“Stolt Tankers has discovered that the service via the Panama Canal has turn out to be more and more unreliable in latest months,” the corporate stated in an electronic mail. “Our prospects want reassurance that their cargo will arrive on time to keep away from negatively impacting their provide chains, due to this fact we now have been rerouting our ships through the Suez Canal.”
The Panama Canal Authority, which usually handles about 36 ships a day, introduced on Oct. 30 that it’s going to step by step cut back the variety of vessels to 18 a day by Feb. 1 to preserve water heading into the dry season. Panama had the driest October on file resulting from a drought attributable to the El Niño climate phenomenon, the authority stated.
It’s unlikely that the canal will be capable to improve site visitors till the wet season begins in mid-2024, in line with specialists. Some ships have needed to wait so long as 20 days to get via the canal this yr. Stolt stated different shippers are “taking an identical method” to cope with the backlog on the canal.
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