Panama Canal Authority remains confident with current procedures

The Panama Canal Authority said it is confident in the process it uses to move ships through the new locks at the canal, following an accident last week that damaged the Xin Fei Zhou after it made contact with one of the walls at the Agua Clara Locks.    The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) said it is confident in the process it is using to move ships through the new locks at the canal, following an accident last week that damaged the 8,530-TEU CSCL Xin Fei Zhou.
   The ship “made contact with one of the walls at the Agua Clara Locks,” said Greg Romano of the public relations firm Edelman, who fielded a query from American Shipper to the ACP. A picture of the ship from gcaptain illustrated a several foot long gash and dent in the hull.
   According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, the Xin Fei Zhou operates on the joint CSCL and CKYHE Alliance Asia-E.S. East Coast AWE4 service, which deploys 10 vessels averaging 8,467 TEUs. The loop has a full port rotation of Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, New York, Boston, Norfolk and Qingdao.
   Romano described the incident with the vessels as a “minor incident” that “did not cause serious damage to the vessel and did not interrupt traffic through the lock nor the waterway.” He noted, “This is the first and only such incident in the expanded waterway” which opened June 26.
   In addition, Romano said a report in London’s Guardian newspaper was inaccurate in saying this was the third incident at the canal.
   “The Panama Canal is confident in the current maneuvering processes employed in the expanded canal. More than 50 neopanamax vessels have safely and successfully transited the new locks since their inauguration (all using tugboats) and the canal has received more than 220 reservations from various types of neopanamax vessels to-date. The Panama Canal is committed to the highest levels of safety and reliability and will continue to consider all means to ensure it provides its customers the best possible service.”
   In the original canal, locomotives that run on tracks on either side of the waterway use wire ropes to center ships in the canal.
   Romano said, the decision to use tugboats in the new locks “was made following numerous studies, models and based on best practices in similar locks systems around the world. In fact, this procedure is actually the same procedure used everywhere else where vessels go through locks. The canal’s old locks are the only ones in the world that use locomotives.
   “Right now, the canal authority is under a microscope,” said Andrew Kinsey, senior marine risk engineer for the insurance company Allianz Global Corpoate and Specialty. “I think what we are looking at here is more of a chance to see how the canal authority is going to handle the investigation. My biggest hope is that it is transparent. That they address what happened and share the information, and let us know. What we have no is one picture of people on a boat with a tape measure.”
   Allianz released a report on the risks and benefits presented by the canal expansion last month.
   In an interview with American Shipper earlier this month Ivan de la Guardia, president of the union of Panama Canal towboat captains, complained about sufficient training for his members and that ships moving through the new locks were having “to do things very slowly.”
   “We are trying to find the best way to put those ships through,” he said on July 14.
   There had been incidents of snapped lines, he said, explaining that “when those ships start kicking, there is a good chance that if the line is worn or not of the best quality or the tugboat is in bad shape at the moment, there is a chance that the line will split or break.”
   He said wash from the propellers of the ships and tug combined create a lot of turbulence.
   De la Guardia explained that with ships sliding against the wall of the locks and not centered in the lock chambers, lock fenders on the wall have come off.
   “There is something that has to be done there, either change the fenders or how the ships go through the locks,” he said.