The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has temporarily lowered the availability of booking slots for panamax vessels as the transit wait time reached 20 days.
The ACP plans to maintain a draught of 13.41 metres — or 44 feet — for the next several months due to prolonged drought conditions.
This has limited transit activity to 32 ships per day, causing backlogs on both sides of the canal that the AMP hopes to alleviate by providing more booking slots to ships other than panamaxes and neopanamaxes.
Effective 5 to 21 August, the number of slots available for “supers,” which are ships with a beam of more than 27.74 metres, was reduced to 10 slots. Meanwhile, the number available to “regulars”, which have narrower beams, was lowered to four slots.
Special auction slots will remain at two for supers and one for regular vessels, but the extraordinary auction for the panamax locks will be suspended during this period, the ACP said.
Also, extraordinary auctions for the neopanamax locks for booking dates between Thursday and 21 August will be suspended, but the daily auction offered a week prior to transit date and the special auction will still be offered.
“These measures are an attempt to mitigate the heavy backlog presently in place allowing additional capacity to be assigned to unbooked vessels,” the AMP said.
There are currently backlogs of 129 ships at the panamax locks and 21 ships at the neopanamax locks that have caused backups of 17 days and 20 days for vessels crossing from the Pacific basin to the Atlantic basin.
Ships crossing in the opposite direction are facing waiting times of 16 days and 19 days, according to the ACP.
