Commodities
The Panama Canal Is So Backed Up Ships Are Rerouting Through the Suez
- Stolt says canal has become ‘increasingly unreliable’
- Says other shippers take similar approach to deal with backlog
Some ships have had to wait as long as 20 days to get through the canal this year.
Photographer: Walter Hurtado/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The Panama Canal has become so backlogged that the world’s largest operator of chemical tankers has decided to reroute its fleet to the Suez Canal.
London-based Stolt-Nielsen, which has a tanker division with 166 ships, is charging customers additional costs for the longer route, it said in an email. A bottleneck at the Panama Canal due to low water levels has prompted shippers to divert to Suez, the Cape of Good Hope, or even through the Strait of Magellan off the tip of South America.