Highlights
The Panama Canal expects to maintain restrictions on daily vessel transit and maximum draft for at least 10 more months due to low water levels. This situation will make the Mississippi River Inland Waterway System less competitive, but will boost demand for rail shipments from the Upper Midwest to the PNW ports. In a move to ease a bottleneck that surpassed 160 vessels earlier this month, the Canal’s authority recently opened two more passage slots per day for non-booked ships, reducing the backlog to 115 ships as of Thursday. In Panama, an El Nino episode contributes to the drought from Central South America to through Central America. There have been two accidents in the Suez canal this month, which has caused some delays, but the Canal is open. Crude oil is the number one cargo through the Suez.