Culebra Cut
The Culebra Cut Widening Project consisted in widening it's span to at least 192 meters along straight stretches and 222 meters in the curves. This initiative allows the Canal to meet growing transit demands by increasing the waterway´s sustainable operating capacity and allowing for more flexible traffic scheduling. It enables two wide-beam Panamax vessels to transit simultaneously in either direction without compromising navigational safety.
The last blasting was performed on July 4, 2001, thus ending the drilling and blasting portion, while on August 16 the excavator Liebherr lifted the last shovelful of the wet excavation work from land.
The major widening work ended on November 2001, when the dredge Christensen removed the last portion of rock and shale from Culebra Cut. This project was completed early and under budget.
The strategy of dividing the widening program into 19 projects or contracts generated an intense competition among local and foreign contractors, which resulted in substantial savings in the dry excavation costs. A grand total of 23.2 million cubic meters of dry material and 12 million cubic meters of underwater material were removed.
As a result of the widening, after pertinent testing, many of the restrictions in the Cut, particularly those limiting traffic flows to a single direction, may be significantly reduced. However, in order to increase the transit capacity of vessels 900 feet in length or more, an additional project was launched to straighten certain curves, which is now expected to be completed in January 2011.
Benefits to the Shipping Industry
The widening of Culebra Cut is part of a more extensive, ongoing, one-billion dollar modernization and canal capacity improvement program. In addition to increasing Canal capacity, it will also benefit the waterway by improving transit service quality during the periods following lane outages, and by reducing the risk of landslides that could disrupt Canal operations. In essence, this Cut widening increases the locks potential by more than 90 per cent.
By actively working to provide safe two-way transit virtually 24 hours a day, along with other improvement and modernization programs to increase Canal capacity and safety, the Panama Canal has the purpose of ensuring that the waterway continues to be an essential part of the Panamanian economy and a viable artery for world trade.
Due to its history, its unusual geology, and the fact that it slices through the Continental Divide, the Panama Canal's Culebra Cut holds a unique attraction for the public in general, especially for the crew and passengers aboard the vessels that transit it.
This portion of the channel is approximately 12.6 kilometers long, and rock and slate were excavated from most of it. It was here where the largest excavation volume was required and where the largest landslides occurred during the construction of the Canal, just after the opening the waterway as well as in many subsequent instances.
The construction of the Panama Canal was an unprecedented success, and the result of a practically superhuman feat that took 10 years and the labor of more than 75,000 men and women to complete.
In the last few decades the average size of ships started a moderate increasing trend. It is expected that the number of PANAMAX ships (the largest that can fit through the Canal locks) transiting the waterway, will increase, from one fourth of the total transits from one ocean to the other, to more than one third of the transits by the year 2010. For example, transits of PANAMAX ships 30.5 meters or more in beam increased to 36.3 per cent of the total ocean to ocean transits in fiscal year 2001.
Due to the narrow and tight curves of Culebra Cut, large ships will be able to transit simultaneously with complete safety through this section of the Canal. With more large ships transiting the waterway, the possibility of more Canal traffic congestion and delays increases that can affect the capacity of the Canal to provide an expeditious transit service in the future.
Although at the present time the Canal has an adequate capacity to handle the current traffic and projected levels, the Canal organization conducts its planning to maintain enough Canal capacity and keep a margin to provide a high quality transit service and handle any unforeseen traffic increases beyond this century.
Updated: 01-Apr-2008
