 So, good morning everybody. My name is, can you hear me? Yeah. My name is Carl Meecham and I'm the Director of the America's Program here at CSIS. Today I'm honored to welcome Jorge Quijano. Mr. Quijano is the CEO of the Panama Canal Authority, the organization that manages the Panama Canal. He's had a long career with the authority and he is shepherding the canal through the final stages of its massive expansion project and that's in large part why we are here today to talk about this. This past August the Panama Canal celebrated its 100th birthday and when you think about that you think about 1914, August 15th, but for me the first images or memories that I have of the Panama Canal are with David McCullis' famous book The Path Between the Seas and looking at sort of the beginnings of the Panama Canal, what it took to build the Panama Canal and to think about that image and think about where we are today is really sort of a testament to progress and it makes it so great to be here with you today. For the past century the Canal has fundamentally shaped the very nature of commerce in and through the Western Hemisphere and the expansion will only add to that. The Panama Canal's expansion is set to overhaul the way business is done both here in the Americas and around the world. The expansion project involves building deeper channels and immense new locks within the canal enabling commerce and shipments going through in a way in a volume that we've never seen. Energy, water, grain, all of these are poised for significant shifts with the opening of the canal's expansion and the U.S. and China will probably likely feel the impacts more than anyone else with both countries big spenders on traded goods and that use the canal in a big way. As its shipments of U.S. grain the energy resources through the canal are increasing just a couple of statistics in 2014 48.6 million metric tons of grain most of it produced in the United States moved through the canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific side for shipment to Asia and increase of more than 50% compared to 2013 shipments of petroleum liquids from the Caribbean side to the Pacific most of them refined and processed along the U.S. Gulf Coast reached 32 million metric tons in 2014 coal and coke shipments principally from Columbia and Eastern U.S. coal fields totaled almost 14.3 million metric tons and I could go on and on with the statistics of the volume in the movement of products and goods through the canal which is just proof of how vital this canal is to trade not just regionally not just for Panama and the importance for Panama but also for the United States and other parts of the world so as we move forward I think it's important to sort of note what's coming and I know you're going to elaborate more on this but hopefully we can develop more conversation about this but the issue of light natural gas LNG is particularly interesting as it comes along with the canal's expansion the huge locks will enable LNG carriers and other large vessels passage through the canal that couldn't be accommodated before and that will likely amount to real increase in LNG propane petroleum and coal shipments from the U.S. to China and the rest of Asia in the meantime and these are introductory comments and very quick there are some issues that are out there that are challenges that I think the canal is dealing with and I look forward to hearing your views on this the issues at least aspirational at this point with a Nicaraguan canal and the possibility of that love to hear your views on that and what that means or what that could mean in so far as impact what does it mean does this mean that trade that now is occurring through the canal or could occur through the canal that if there was another option it would actually be used I don't know but I'd love to hear you talk about still the future of the Panama Canal is a bright one and I'm happy to have mr. Quijano to talk to us about that here today so we're gonna move on to his remarks I would remind all of you that we are on the record after mr. Quijano's presentation I'm gonna ask him a couple of choice questions and we'll open it up to to folks in the audience so without further ado thank you mr. Quijano for being here and the floor is yours well thank you and I'm glad to be here and share with you not only I really gonna talk a little bit about the expansion towards the end I was telling Anne who have met before and in other more technical meetings over in the United States that you know we'll see less hardware and more of the business of the Panama Canal in this meeting and you have gone over fairly well what I'm going to cover but I want to give you a backdrop of what's a Panama Canal from a business standpoint what who do we tend who what do we pass through the Panama Canal and what the opportunities are there for the future growth of the Panama Canal and to do that I have to go back a little bit in history with regard to the transuits and and the passage of how the traffic has evolved over time and how vessels also have grown in size as you see here in this in the slide you know after we reached 1965 or more or less we reached like the peak of numbers of transits and we continue to grow basically the ships so that we could handle more tonnage and as you see even during the periods of wars and so on yes we've had our peaks and valleys but we've always recovered from those we've recovered from from 2007 and eight as eight and nine as well and and yes we've been bumpy and I would say that that bumpiness has been created by really the United States who is our main customer and you'll see that in the next few slides so if the US does very well the Panama Canal does excellent when you're not doing too well we survive and so we're always hoping that the US grows at the rate of maybe 3% because that's very good for us but we can survive fairly well with a 2% growth what we cannot do is have you not grow at all because that really has a significant impact on the Panama Canal so you do well we do well plus what is the canal is not as important as what what is Panama remember is a location location location and what we have in Panama is of course we know the canal is there and we have the Panama's maritime cluster actually services 144 maritime routes it services 1700 ports in the world and 160 countries so it's not just the United States but it's that exchange that mostly is for the United States that is important but also in the latter years we've also grown to in the air connections actually for the first first time I haven't been in DC for a long time and first I've been around the United States in many places but not in DC for maybe about 10 or 15 years and come close to Norfolk that's as far north as that come lately but you know one of the things that's important is that the the connectivity of Panama now has been enhanced also by air and as you know with the internet and so on everybody wants to have their stuff then the next day so air connections together with the maritime connections become a very important asset and and the best place to have those interconnections is in a central location and Panama's geographical position in the Americas make it the best place to do business from if you're going to attack the basically the Americas so this is what we bring what and what we're trying to do with the expansion is actually achieve that full potential of the geographical position of Panama so I'm not pushing just the canal I'm pushing Panama because it's all about Panama in the end the canal is one of the main engines of Panama's economy but it is also it serves itself from having good ports it also there's a synergy there the more port capacity that you have on both sides Atlantic and Pacific the more you will draw of these post-Panamax vessels in the future so it's important for us also to keep growing on the infrastructure on the water side as well on the land side the main routes that we serve you see here Asia East Coast of United States that's our main state that's what brings in most of the revenue and we also serve West Coast of South America East Coast of US these are in order of of relative importance to the canal we have the West Coast of South America to Europe so Panama or the Panama Canal depends a lot on how the main economies around us are doing not just the United States but also Europe so in in a period where you have Europe down and US down the Panama Canal suffers tremendously West Coast Central America to East Coast of United States and South America intercoastal out those are our main our main routes those that we serve primarily but the most important part here is the countries that we serve and of course 69% of all of what goes through the Panama Canal either originates in the United States or is destined to the United States so the United States continues to be actually has grown it used to be like 65% maybe for 10 years ago is now 69% it's it's has grown to 69% for the Panama Canal number two is China and of course that's the exchange is so don't try to add this because you won't add the the idea here is that you see that it exchanges between economy so China the stronger China a strong US and a strong Europe will give excellent results for the Panama Canal but in the recent I would say but recent 10 15 years we seem chill as economy of course growing very well and that has also brought Chile into the big picture of being in the top three customers of the canal with Japan sliding from being the number two about 15 years ago to being now number three but still a strong user of the Panama Canal and I must stress here that even though they're number three when you put all of the lines together the Japanese lines they are the number one and actually right now the number one customer of the Panama Canal as a line per se is NYK so it's Japanese is Japan is also a very important customer of the canal in that sense now you see Colombia starting you know with a population of about 40 million and a lot of consumption and also a lot of export as has become number five South South Korea number six and and now let me take you over to the segments that we serve because you know it's easy when you only serve one segment of of the vessels but when you have to service all of the segments and they all have different preferences that makes even more difficult the way we run our business so over years if you look at the little circle that I put there the canal used to be mainly a dry bulk canal which men carried grain carried let's say coal from the United States over to Asia and in 1999 you know we saw the trend of the container business going up actually if you look at all of our annual reports and you go back to 1990 containers were not even reported in our in our business in our annual reports it was basically 1991 on where they started to move up but in 2001 the most important part here to say is that that's when the China joined the World Trade Organization and the globalization really took off and that's you see the trend in the container business going up all the way to 2007 picking out up there and then of course coming down because of the global economic situation starting to pick up again sliding down in 2014 slightly but dry bulk over time has started to pick up and this is very important and I'll get to that in a moment you've mentioned the fact that a lot of grain goes out of through Panama and that's a fact and liquid bulk we will see liquid bulk and which includes also gas will also be a part of our new business strategy as we move along so you see where our revenue stream is container business is number one 48 percent of all of the tolls paid to the Panama Canal comes from the container trade second to that with only 21 percent is dry bulk so that's how important the container segment is to us and that is why and I focus on that because that's when we had to pick the size of a lock to determine who to to really stress who we would serve we went to the container segment and we picked a vessel size that would render the best revenue stream in the future tending to that container segment the container segment of course is a line service they they run on a schedule they know what ports they have to hit in a particular time and a service is at least the way we have it in the Panama Canal is we'll have a ship one service means one ship going north remember Panama is search the Atlantic and Pacific but it actually curves around like an S so to us is north and south west is south north is east so so we say going north is really going to the Atlantic and so we have one ship going to the Atlantic and one ship coming to the Pacific per week per service and what's important to that is that we have 30 services right now of all over the world as you see that that come through the Panama Canal and each of those services on average with two that today sizes of vessel is around 40 to maybe 45 million dollars of revenue so that's how important this segment is to the Panama Canal now but together with that and that's why I emphasize Panama's connectivity and not the Panama Canal's connectivity is the fact that from Panama you also have feeder services and these feeder services not only go regionally they actually also feed into Europe and feed into Asia and and and when you go here you see the Atlantic Atlantic feeder services we have 24 on the Pacific feeder services we only have 11 one of the reasons is because we do not have enough the reasons is is lowest we would not we do not have enough capacity on the Pacific side to be able to to handle to handle the additional potential that's there for feeding services on the Pacific end so we have 35 feedings feed feeder services coming out of Panama in feeding all over the world so this is very important because we even see a feeder service that is a post-Panamax feeder that actually comes from Lázaro Cardenas in Mexico stops in Panama and goes back into Asia with a 9,000 TUU vessel and this is done on a weekly basis it doesn't go through the canal because it can't fit it in the canal but that's that's how important that connectivity is and we expect this to continue to grow now that we can take on bigger vessels but why we talk so much about the east coast and Gulf ports of the United States we the share of imports to the United States on the east coast and and the Gulf ports like Houston for example you see how much of that New York 20 New York New York City 22% of what's going in through there is going through the Panama Canal Norfolk 15% Charleston 21% Miami 28% but the largest one of all is Savannah with 37% that's how important and in essence on average we're talking about 32.6% off market share of what's going to the east coast why we talk about east coast because that's where most of the concentration of population is and population means consumption and so as much as we see we foresee in the future that there's going to be continuous growth in that in in this area actually we've been noticing that there seems to be more growth in the eastern part of the United States and in the western part of the United States and that is good for Panama that's good for the Panama Canal in particular I mentioned the choosing of the size of vessel and of course everybody says oh but there are other vessels that are being built today that are much larger and yes I we recognize that we have moved now from about 92% of the world's fleet can fit in with and length in the lock chambers we will go to 98% of the world's fleet and in the container segment even though they're building the 16,000 and the 18,000 and the 20,000 TU vessels we will still by 2018 when all of those that are being constructed are completed we'll be able to handle 97% of the 5,669 vessels of the container segment in the new locks so it's not that all of them are going to transit through those locks we will never be able to handle all of that but what I'm trying to point out is that yes vessels larger will be built but not in the numbers that will affect the trade that we're looking at actually some of the 8,000 TU vessels we start hitting the west the west coast and and we see that yes that's that's a clear possibility that that will happen but there is still the need to cascade down all of the 16,000 the 14,000 which can fit in the in the new Panama Canal lock so you reach when you're when you are proposing a pro expansion program you have to determine the size and you have to determine where your point of diminishing returns are and we figure that anywhere between 13 and 14,000 TU vessels would be the point of diminishing return for the Panama Canal making a major investment in the infrastructure that should be able to service vessels for the next 100 years what that would give us the expanding the canal to a bigger size vessel also gives us the the possibility to have more influence over the areas that we right now have impact over with we have we we expect that because of the economies of scale will be able to compete with the other other areas or other competitors that service the same customers so what we see is an expanding of that area of influence where we can go more into into Asia and we can go more into United States including Texas so we would have a a more aggressive approach to to our customer base and also a part of the northern part of South America which is very important because there's Brazil major Brazil exports are coming out on Amazon as well so what is that all we want to get those you have the main large ships the post-pandemic vessels coming from Asia going through the canal but they will stop not all of them may stop but some of them will stop they will discharge some of the some of the cargo and they will pick up some of the cargo that already happens 80% of the vessels that that container vessels that transit the Panama Canal today make a local port stop to drop off or pick up so we only see this as growing and and and and with the vessels growing more container transshipment is going to happen we see this in essence being a little bit more like Singapore Singapore does not produce much but they are the largest transshipment port in the world doing 35 million movements to use in in a year of transshipment is not the major producer because they really cannot produce that much but they have the biggest transshipment port and we expect to grow significantly in that area of transshipment in Panama as well we are very just a few days away to feed from Panama as you as you see here from Las Auto Cardenas in Mexico we are only about three to four days depending on speed of vessels same thing from Kayao in Peru and San Antonio Chile the big ships will not likely be calling on those extreme ports because you cannot bring in a a 14,000 to you vessel and take it all the way to San Antonio Chile fully discharge it and then fully charge it again you know load it again so that trend of feeding more from Panama is what we are banking on and we firmly believe that this is going to increase over the next few years after expansion is completed we also see population in the United States increasing maybe not as much as South America but we see South America and you saw the importance of of some of the our custom top customers in South America and as as we see the population growing to 20 30 to 700 million in the whole of Latin America we believe that the increased consumption by the growing middle class will also boost how much feeding we can do from the from Panama and how much transit will have through the Panama Canal just so you have an idea the importance to these other countries and when you see the United States is you know the maritime trade through the through Panama is only 11.9 percent but when you look at Ecuador it's 30.7 percent 20 28.4 26.7 for Chile this is how important the Panama Canal is in their maritime trade so it's not just the US but it's when you start adding those numbers is a significant potential for further increasing as the population rose so it's not just the United States it's also about the rest of the region though we serve faraway places like Spain South Korea Italy Netherlands and so on you see those percentages are much lower our mainstay is really the Americas and you mentioned US grain exports to us that is another segment that is very important and total US grain exports were in 2014 hundred and 29.1 million tons of that the Panama Canal served at 47.2 million tons which is 36.6 of that total that is significant 36 percent of your grain exports of course when you look at the relevant areas that we can serve because you have to yeah if you if you have grain that's going to to the west part of Africa for example that will never come through the Panama Canal and if you're going to Europe or or northern Europe or anywhere really east of the United States that's not gonna that's not relevant to our to our area but when you look at the numbers that we can really tend to we're we're at 83.3 percent of what that area that is being served that we are able to to to seal off so 83.3 percent of that trade that we can only leaving only 17 percent for others to pick up on and that's because they use the bigger ships to go through around Cape of Good Hope so we expect then with bigger ships coming out and I'll go here very quickly grain movements from in in new panamax vessels slightly larger going through the Panama Canal we expect some of those to that 17 percent to grow even further as we move along with the larger vessel also the fact that we can now have vessels up to 50 foot draft this is 50 foot in fresh tropical fresh water not salt water so you have to adjust about a foot less than that that's about 49 feet of foot of draft in in in salt water so this allows this 75,000 dead weight turn vessel that today is a panamax that can go in the canal go all the way fully charged fully loaded and therefore is a new transit coming from the northern part of brazil there are potential cold movements both in also in new panamax using Cape size vessels but loaded not 280k but loaded to about 130 135 going through the Panama Canal as well from the United States and but we also see cold movements from Santa Marta in in Colombia as a great potential there's a there's a an American company called Drummond maybe some of you know them they have exploited that that particular mine there and they're looking for an export through the Panama Canal in a much larger vessel but you mentioned earlier LNG when we went forward with our proposal to build the expansion we never anticipated the shale evolution actually was not at all in our calculations it was something that that wasn't even mentioned the only the only movements that we saw where maybe LNG coming from Trinidad Tobago going to Chile from Peru a little bit going maybe east coast or Europe something like that very little hardly anything maybe a ship a week or something like that but that has changed and and you saw the potential that the US has now and as an export what we're looking at is now the potential of moving a lot of of traffic of LNG in this Neoparamax vessel which can carry up to 173,177,000 cubic meters of LNG from the Gulf ports Sabin Pass Lake Charles going to Japan going to Korea going to China going to Taiwan these are the main four importers of gas it's important to note that even though there's investments going on for LNG liquefaction plants gas liquefaction plants in the US not all of the investment is American the Japanese are very much involved in in in the plants that are being developed in Lake Charles and in Sabin Pass so and we see yesterday I got a note from Lake Charles from from a friend we have there he says there are two more plants that are now in the schedule to go on line sometimes between four and five years from now so what we see is a a new business that will evolve from the first year of operation of the expansion to maybe two transits per week to something like in 2020-2021 to three transits per day so that's how much evolution we see in this and of course it will depend on on policies here in the United States of with regard to to the export of LNG but that's what we're counting on that there is right now the possibility of a lot of exports of LNG from the Gulf going through the Panama Canal and of course we have as I mentioned these other two possibilities not major but maybe a couple of transits a week coming from Trinidad Tobago or coming from Peru to Spain for example very briefly now I just like four slides I'll talk to you about the Panama Canal expansion where we are I'll show you some pictures and I'll talk about it a little bit more what we are is the whole expansion is at 90 percent complete right now we have till about January to be operationally functionally operating so that we can do some navigation testing and we expect to be online commercially in April that's still we're moving along very well these few months have shown good very good progress and if we keep this pace we definitely will be there as planned as now it is planned we see the LOX project for example is at 87 percent going into really more into 88 percent at this point in time and this is numbers off April so we are much better at this point in time and we the other main project is at night basically 90 percent complete which and this other project which is much smaller should be completed by August which is the connection between the new Pacific LOX and the Culebra cut which is the cut across the continental divide that carries us into this big lake here which is Lake Gatun so we have worked all over the canal the canal is 80 kilometers long 50 miles long and we have done work on all of that stretch and that we are basically on the home stretch at this point in time just so you have an idea 1939 the US wanted to do an expansion of the Panama canal and they started in 1939 they stopped in 1942 after they entered World War II with it was never retaken as a project but some of the work that had been done and you see the little channel there at the end here this channel is part of that digging that they did they actually did about 14 million cubic meters of excavation for that and this is what it looks today so it has changed significantly and we are almost done actually we're putting in this is on the Atlantic side and we're putting in the pipe here that has already been placed since we took this picture but this excavation is to start the filling the plan is to start the filling of the LOX which it takes about nine weeks to do we start from the lower end filling the lower end from the top but we fill up the lower end and we go to the middle and we go to the upper and we'll take us all the way to august to be fully full but we will begin by mid june we'll begin the filling of the LOX on the Atlantic side why is it so slow because you have to do the testing of the gates as we go down in the testing of the valves so you do that you fill up first enough so you can move the gates and once we we know we move the gates and that works fine and we also control the valves and see how the leakage on the valves are and need to make any adjustment they have to be done once that happens now you can fill up that chamber all the way to the top which then equalizes with the next level so to do that you have to make sure that all of the seals on the gates work before you go to the next level so it takes i hope it takes less than that but we're figuring that the process may take up to three weeks per level so that will take us into sometime in august to be totally filled we would be removing then what we call the plug this plug here so and the other plug over there so sometime in august we should be connecting the caribbean with gatoon lake on the pacific end this is what we had in the pacific that the 1939 excavations performed by the united states this is what it looks today it's just slightly behind but maybe a month or two behind the atlantic locks and they will start probably in july the filling of these locks as well so that's what we plan for now and everything goes right then we would have this atlantic locks done by august for then other testing that needs to be done for the times that it takes to fill and so on and then we go over to the pacific we should be fully filled by october to start then our navigation testing with our pilots and our total captains to assist the vessels in between january and march and then going commercial at the end uh at the beginning of april of 2016 so and that's uh that's to give you the background and i'm open for questions of course you have one question there i don't know what you want me to talk about that at this point in time or you want me to wait for all the questions let me just ask you a couple questions i know people are going to have a lot of questions around here and i already see some hands going up so um just two things i mean you've given us a wonderful comprehensive briefing on on where things have been and where you believe things are going um a lot of folks right now their minds are on trade agreements in the united states particularly the tpp and one of the issues that i think would be interesting to get your views on if you've done anything uh that has to do with this is how something like the tpp would impact your business uh with the expansion what does something like the tpp mean for you well you know we we always depend on on what agreements you reach uh and of course uh as as as you have agreements that promote business through the canal uh uh we we rather those than those that avoid the canal um but i think there is enough out there enough business out there for all of the competitors uh and of course trans pacific goes to the west coast uh in l l you know long beach and and and la are uh good friends with us but we also compete you know there's an environment competition what we we stress in the Panama Canal is reliability and in the container trade reliability is number one uh you i want my ship to be on a given port at a given time and we have reservations a reservation system that takes care of that a vessel can be reserved almost a year ahead of time if that's what you want we can accept a reservation from a year ahead of time on the day that you want to transit and if we don't transit you on that day within 18 hours we pay you back the reservation fee which is about 10 percent of the tolls transit so uh we bank on on on being reliable we're always there for our customer and we've seen some some uh deviation or or diversion of trade uh because of the of the problems in in the west coast which i'm glad to hear i'm always glad to hear the things come to to uh normal stance and uh but we we did get some trade coming our way and i hope it stays with us uh but uh we were ready for the competition and we're ready for suez as well which is another competitor uh the main consumption like i said earlier is in in the east coast states of the united states and we have three basic competitors there west coast ports with the intermodal system uh and panama canal and suez suez is now a major contender because they can handle the post panamax vessels if we cannot so and the the building of larger vessel has cascaded down the 9 000 te u vessels so for us to compete against uh suez is very difficult with a 4500 te u vessel versus a 9 000 te u vessels but a few months from now that's going to go away and that will now put us in a more competitive environment and we expect to get definitely some additional tonnage coming to the panama canal but what we believe is that the united states will grow and that's what we're banking on we're banking on growth that will be beneficial for the west the west ports that will be beneficial maybe even for some for suez but it will be mostly beneficial for the panama canal as well and and i would just ask the last question i guess for my part will be how do you see uh the potential for another canal uh the all the talk that that has occurred regarding a possible nicaraguan canal and and what does that mean for for the expansion and for uh the panama canal in general i mean there's a lot of speculation on if it will happen or if it won't happen uh but if it were to happen what does that mean to you we're focused right now on actually getting our canal done and getting um let me let me do this here i had a professor in college that used to say in northwestern i did a a little bit of an update in northwestern and he was more of an accountant he said uh i asked him one day a question he said that's a good question and then somebody else and and then he gave a good answer and then somebody else asked another question he said that's a great question and then i and i said why is that great than mine just oh because i have a slide for that so so i have this is a great question so this is a great question all right thank you thank you so let let me just address uh a little bit of give a little bit of background yeah panama canal has been in service for a hundred years service not just construction in service for a hundred years we have so much experience in handling all of the different trades we are concentrating on our effort not on what nicaragua wants to do or may be able to do in time we have very competitive pricing uh if something like the pan the nicaragua canal is built as an investment they'll have a very difficult time to compete with suez with the panama canal and with the west coast ports that's a that's a that's a definite fact uh so from and that's what mr one gene has been claiming that this is a private investment and anybody that puts money in private investment expects for return i don't think they want to subsidize the operation so i'll just give you a very short briefing here on on on the nicaragua canal it's really a much longer canal than the panama canal that's 280 kilometers versus 80 kilometers so it's 200 kilometers longer uh in essence it's uh also uh two they're going to have two locks just like ours actually they what they show in the pictures are pictures of of our of our own illustrations and it is going to undertake a major investment from not just from the standpoint of investment but also from the standpoint of uh excavations and dredging and i i'll just give you that because there's as much information as out there is most of it comes like this comes in chinese so we have to more or less decipher the numbers are we recognize the numbers so so we know that those numbers what what they mean so we end up translating to english or spanish and this is what that means they want to use route number four 278 kilometer in length the width of channels is between 230 meters to 520 meters channel depth which then will give us a approximate maximum graph of 25.67 which is significant and the beam design of 65 meters because they want to go to a 400 dead weight ton vessel to carry a lot of mineral so that that's really their concentration and i assume this mineral is going to change when you do that kind of an investment what they're talking about and i'll just go very quickly over here they have to do this amount of excavation sorry about that somebody is trying to get me here you notice the excavation that they have to do uh is four four uh 4.6 billion cubic meters of excavation plus another uh almost billion off dredging volume that they have to do uh all of that is going to cost about 60 to 70 billion dollars these estimates we have done ourselves with our engineering staff we have looked at all of the information that's available and topography and so on and and we come out very close to their numbers with regard to to uh the dry excavation and dredging volumes but to put it in the in in our perspective let me just give you an idea during the construction period by the french they excavated 63 million cubic meters uh of that only 23 million were we were able i mean the the further construction down and by the u.s were able to use then during the construction period of the united states they did 178 million bringing that total to about 201 between 1904 and 1914 then we went and see that we had landslides and and post construction issues that we had to resolve so we had another 70 million all all the way to 1986 we had canal widenings and deepenings that cost another 123 uh million cubic meters leading to 394 and now with the expansion project we've now reached 549 million you remember the previous number was 1.5 uh one uh sorry 5.5 billion this is a tenth in 134 years okay they the problem that that i see is that they want to do this in five years so what does that mean during the current expansion we did the best we could do with all of the dredging and all of the excavations being done simultaneously we did 140 thousand cubic meters per day uh and we had all kinds of dredgers both in the Atlantic Pacific on the lake and we had all kinds of heavy equipment all over the place what Nicaragua needs to do in five to construct this in five years is 3.1 million cubic meters a day that is one and a half kiosk pyramids per day um that's a factor of 22 times so i leave it at that okay it's more a question to your mind rather than answer from me we will concentrate on getting our business strategy on serving the customer having uh being competitive with those that surround us and if they ever come online we'd be very competitive and if they have to spend and it's a and they have to get a return on the investment of what we calculate would be 60 to 70 billion dollars to actually do this job can be done yeah they would have to charge double our tolls so i don't know how they're going to be able to compete with so i i i'd leave it at that and i remind you it was a great question so that was a great let me go let me go in the back first if there's a microphone and then i'll move it up here please identify yourself or if you just want to use one of the microphones over here so we can pick your question up uh thank you sure thank you and mr thank you so much for some wonderful remarks and since carl asked such a great question um i'd like to move a little further on that one if i may i'm richard downey from delphi strategic consulting um you made your point and it's it's well taken that yes um you're focused on the panama canal not the nicaraguan canal as you should be and you also address the point that from an economic viability and compatibility standpoint you know the chinese would have a tough time doing that and they certainly if it is in fact for investment purposes they want to get a return on their investment but as we know most chinese companies in the private sector are not necessarily totally private there is some spillover with the government and so not asking your opinion of course but yeah i'm sure over a drink uh you are speculating with other officials with other uh your friends what kind of talk what kind of speculation do you uh do you give to this if there's no economic viability for the canal is it something that for example the china the chinese could use this i mean i look for the depth of the canal 27.67 meet almost 28 meters that as you've mentioned that's a huge amount uh is this an effort in your speculation your friend's speculation um is this an effort to go around the kind of neutrality that can they to move be able to move illegal cargo similar to what you caught in the north korean ship a couple of years ago is what what just is that kind of speculation that you've heard thank you that is a very dangerous question and i'm gonna i'm that that's not that's not a great question that's a very dangerous question i i will have to just comment lightly on this because i don't know really what's on their mind of of those that are they think they're they're proposing that they're proposing this project as one of investment i have read the contract with the country and it's a it's a a very strong contract for the contractor side the only speculation that i could see and people have mentioned is the fact that maybe it's a real estate investment more than a canal and and and if you look at the contract the contract doesn't require them to build a canal in the end it just gives them access to build a canal it they can build a canal or they can build ports or they can build all of it or they can build so where are they going with this i don't know yes there's a lot of interest of of the chinese government through chinese companies and to invest in latin america that's a fact in panama they just they didn't win the bid but they went for the second line of the metro they came in second with a good proposal with regard to money wise you know so so they're very interested they have participated in in several of our contracts in the past and they haven't won but they are very capable they're they also have good financial strength so we see them as good contenders for future projects and in the canal they have demonstrated in our canal that they they actually have told us several times and including about two weeks ago that they would be willing to construct the fourth set of locks and make it deeper wider you know almost equal to whatever may happen in the car or not and they would fund that too so not just the construction part but the funding so yes there is a legitimate your question is legitimate in that sense in that there is a lot of interest from china to concentrate investments in africa but also in in latin america and we've seen it all over the place now the the thing with the depth of the canals and the width of the canals is that if you have to charge the tolls that they need to charge you would rather put that vessel going around a good hope rather than putting it in making an investment putting it through the canal and there you don't have to deal with any country at all you're you're free to move around so that's why we see a that that the investment has to be something beyond an investment so i don't i don't want to talk anymore about about what i speculate because this we're really not too concerned about what's happening we keep an eye on anything that could be a competition and we analyze it as you've seen i mean we dedicated time to do this because we we realize that that could be once we determine that yeah i can be but look at at the numbers we decided let's just leave it there we keep track of what's going on but we have to deal with a real competition which is west coast suace that's what we have in mind and look for new business and that's what we're doing looking for new business i think the lng is a great new business for us and uh you know whether that happens or not that's something else that's that's uh nika rawa to handle that situation with mr wangin we we want to uh continue to focus on finishing our canal getting it to be productive getting our start getting the returns that we expected from it very very soon and and that's why we we're planning for next april to have our uh going operational but not just operational but commercially uh operational at that point in time but you also specified uh in fairness just to add to you to your answer you you specified that the specs uh of the canal of the necrone canal particularly the depth there's one consistent with the transport of heavy minerals so you know that goes to the whole issue of natural resources and the focus maybe that the chinese have on you know creating another option are on alternative to transport transport uh natural resources to china and that's why i mentioned that where are those natural resources basically those natural resources are in brazil and colombia and if you put it on a very large carrier the 400 uh their weight on vessel they can they can go with less cost going through through uh south of africa than going going through the any of the canals even even the panama canal so uh we run that sense of sensibility study and it gave us those numbers that that basically doesn't doesn't make sense to go to such a large canal because then taking the ship a bigger ship around and not having to pay tolls is is a less expensive uh is less expensive and uh experiment yeah let me get the gentleman up here mr gihano thank you very much for your presentation charlie dias uh representing abs consulting uh two quick questions the first one is on the arctic and frankly i think you did a very excellent job i think of of showing that the panama canal authority is playing to your strengths and and you showed graphically how the arctic may be less of a concern because of the shipping routes that they that may open up as a result but if you'd like to comment on that please do so the second one is related to climate change and that is drought conditions as you know they're drought conditions pretty serious in california arizona texas you know southwest not that you may or may not have those now but is have you taught about sort of the contingency there especially with the freshwater component of the canal thank you yeah freshwater component of the canal is very important and and and yes uh climate change although not very well defined at this point in time uh is something that we have to look at and and and start getting ready for it so in panama we'll we'll have to start looking not just for the canal because you know the canal is uh yeah we have a lot of water that's used for for the canal but most of the population of panama actually gets its water supply portable water from those two lakes that we have a lake alaguela which is a higher lake and and and lake gatun so it is a combined effort so we have to start looking at other uh resources water resources and and we have identified a few in the past which we will have to uh somehow reactivate but and and we see that yes droughts uh do come around El Niño it's uh presents itself um like to us in panama like every 10 years uh actually the last strong El Niño was in 1997-98 if we were expecting it in 2007-2008 didn't happen uh the year before last it was not a very wet year but then last year was okay this year is is a little bit uh dry uh we have even though our wet season just started we haven't had as much rain as we should have for the month of May uh so there is some concern with regard to that but we do extensive water management to make sure that we always have water for the canal and for the people or the other way around for the people and the canal and so it to us uh the water is very important water management even though for example we have hydroelectric power plants that we when we have too much water or we have excess water we use use that to to generate electricity when we have situations like this where there's less precipitation we we do not generate electricity with those hydro power electric plants we buy if we need to buy or we generate with our thermal plants which uh we have and we also are part of the grid so we also sell electricity as part of one of our side businesses is selling electricity we only consume about 12 percent of what we actually produce so uh water is going to be important to all of us and uh in Panama we're paying special attention to water resources not just because of the canal but because of the needs of the people as well so I I'd say something to watch out for you mentioned the Northwest Passage of course there's sometimes there's a confusion between the Northwest Passage and the and and and the passage over Russia which has evolved most significantly most significantly over the years they still are challenging passages especially the Northwest Passage you may start going into it but you don't know where you're going to get out of it so especially on a on a large ship and and it opens up the very most three months or two months in the year it may open up a little bit more but remember it gets dark again and ice picks up again so it's not a reliable channel and it has some safety issues as well so uh what we sell to the Panama Canal is reliability number one uh together with safety so that makes this passage the Panama Canal a a more secure passage uh and one that you can count on most of the time what will happen with Northwest Passage I don't know but you know it will depend on on if we are able as countries of the world to somehow control our emissions and one of the things that the canal does is it is less it's more green than any of the competitors Suez is four more days of emissions you go to the intermodal system and you add the vessel you add the intermodal system you actually per TEU you will be producing more CO2 or emitting more CO2 into into the environment then go into the Panama Canal so we feel that the Panama Canal is still a better option is more fuel efficient and it will be more so now with the expanded canal because now you can go to the size of vessel that can carry three times the containers than than that we can carry now so we will be in a better position to compete from a standpoint of our ecological uh friendliness so I believe that that's something in the future like we're looking at water something in the future that all we are all concerned about is making sure that we use a less amount of fuel and we emit the less amount of CO2 so I think Panama is still a better choice than the other competitors in that respect okay so we're running out of time so what we're going to do is we're going to just I'm going to take the two questions any questions on this side and three we're just going to ask the questions and then you're going to pick which ones you want to okay answer okay so we'll start over here uh we'll go over there back in the side and then we're uh I wish there were all questions that you could say yes or no right right but it's it's up to you yeah it's up to you and then again we don't know if they're good questions yeah anyway but yeah we'll have slide for a little bit yeah they may be good but not excellent we'll take the questions and then it'll be up to you so that's it we're closing shop now so go thanks mr count I'm Alan shop with apr energy I wanted to connect a couple of the points you made one about the impact of the canal on count on Panama in general about the increasing population in Latin America including the middle class and then also the escalation of LNG shipments through the canal I'm wondering if the if all these three kind of coalesce to become a catalyst for uh LNG drop-offs to can or to Panama making Panama a regional energy hub where you take LNG and turn it into power for the region okay next question I'm Mason Leon with the Intermodal Association of North America my question was also about the rate structure um and I was wondering what kind of industry feedback you received during the review process thank you okay so that's one question combined uh sir um my name is uh Frank Hallwell from CGLA infrastructure and my question was about the long-term strategy you said that you want it to be a major trench shipment hub that's your long-term strategy very much like the Singapore model and you said there's a lack of capacity on the Pacific side so what are like two or three projects after the expansion has completed to sort of address that lack of capacity I know that the port of cortisol is going to be retendered there's an LNG group is is working on the on the Caribbean side but what are three other projects that you might point to which uh which you're excited about okay and the last question yeah I'm born from China's Guam daily this morning before coming here I read a story by VOA this the common the Latin America experts say that uh China's proposal with the Brazil Peru to build up the railway from the Atlantic coast to Pacific coast might be a very big challenge for Panama Canal and he even said that Panama Canal might be delayed for the expansion for the expansion how do you respond to that so this is the dry canal right uh yeah yeah the dragon okay so we basically have let's say we have four four questions the issue of Panama becoming an energy hub the rate structure projects that can increase its capacity and then if the dry canal what what what kind of challenges would a dry canal provide to to the Panama Canal on the energy hub we definitely feel that Panama can serve as an energy hub mostly at the beginning to supply bunkering LNG bunkering to vessels that will develop that technology actually right now there's a vessel that that's in in the west coast in San Diego being retrofitted and it's going to go into service going to go through Panama Canal in September it's uh operated by coat and it is going to be servicing from it's going to Puerto Rico from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico and it picks up its gas in Puerto Rico so sorry in Jacksonville so we feel that because of the passage in a central location where Panama is we could serve as a gas station just like you know you remember going back 50 years you know you you pick the roads that had the most gas stations and when you were driving to make sure you always had an option of when to fill the same thing is here as as we develop vessels that will be have proportions with LNG they will need bunkering stations and the best place to have them is in central locations and we are at a very precise location where in the center of the Americas and and therefore someone coming from a long haul or going on a long haul could actually stop and top off or fill up at at Panama so that's one of the that's one of the things that we're looking at in the future as you see here on the left here you see the LNG terminal it's one of one of the projects that we're thinking that could be developed but the first phase of that is having the critical mass for energy production so you need electrical power generation from LNG enough somewhere between three to four hundred megawatt to be able to then have enough critical mass to bring in a load of LNG so that you could then from there also bunker so we see that as a possibility down the road five six years from now we've talked to our customers about what they're doing with LNG propulsion systems and what they've said is that they're looking at it and they don't see it for the next five years as a something very regular but we'll see some being converted because especially in the container trade there's a loss of space when you put in the big tanks so that's that's one of the problems that we see but but I think it is going to take off and Panama is in a very good location to be able to bunker we also we also look at you have the rate structures I I didn't come prepared to talk about the rate structures that we've done are very very varied as you saw we we have different segments though that we tender to and we for example we took off we took the container trade which is the most important and we we charge for the capacity of the vessel and then we also charge for the amount of containers that are full and what we and before we were doing like 80 percent of what was full was being charged as well so now what we've done is we've gone down to 60 percent in essence what we're doing in there is we're sharing on how the market actually fluctuates so we're sharing with our customer if the rates if there's a good market and the rates actually go up we will be able to make more money they will be making more money as well but if the rates go down and and and and and then they have less fill containers going through we will be sharing in in that in essence in that loss as well so that's that's a takeoff from the original rate structure that we had but we also had a loyalty program where the more containers you put through the canal the better pricing over the prime pricing that you will get and that was never in our total structure before and what that gives you is trying to keep the top customers the top liners the you know the MRS the NYKs the all of you know Evergreen Costco all of those are our primary customers to continue to use the canal and accumulate that frequent flyer miles okay there's a frequent transit numbers that we're going to pick up from them and that will give them a better rate it's not a discount but it's an incentive rate that is prime and it's less than than they would if they didn't have it and we have we have several thresholds if you pass that threshold you get a prime rate then if you pass the next threshold you get another prime rate we have a set up so that those that are in an alliance they will get the credit not for the alliance but they will get the credit for the ship that is paying the tolls and that's a that's an argument that we've had before because they would rather have it all long together but for us to keep track of whose container is on board is very difficult so what we've done is the ship that's paying the tolls gets the rate depending on what line how many containers have carried in the past year through the Panama Canal so I want to leave it at that there are other structures within the different segments that where we have we're trying to attract for example in dead weight we went to dead weight tonnage and in the Panama Canal tonnage as well on on the on the bulkers and we have rates especially to attract coal and attract iron ore from Brazil for example so those rates are lower than for example the grain rates so that's something that we're doing there so this is a very innovative total concept of toll structure but I must you know you say what's going to happen in the future I have to be very careful here because this is the first time we've done a massive overhaul of our structures so we have to see over the next year and a half what happens how how everything panned out did it pan out like we expected it to pan out and did our customers benefit and we benefit as well or not and then we'll have to make adjustments I don't want to project into the future those are the tolls that will be in place for about a year and a half and we'll be reviewing that and we'll be talking to our customers like we did in this last last a few years where we spent almost two years talking to our customers before we come up with a proposal and just to answer the last question what were the comments I would say that 99 percent of the comments were either neutral or favorable and of course there's always someone that doesn't like to have their tolls increase and I can accept that because I don't like those increased on anything that I have to pay a toll for. Transshipment port capacity yes we we believe that the Caribbean has enough capacity right now but the Pacific does not we see the potential for Panama to adding additional capacity with the and you mentioned the Corosal port we're still working on that we we have some issues that we have to take to Congress our Congress and we're hoping to do that in July and see if we can go forward with our original plan that's for a basically two-phase project that will give us 55.2 million Tu capacity additional on the Pacific side the good news is that PSA is now increasing their capacity on the Pacific end next week they'll be actually starting the work on on their expansion going from 500 000 Tu's to they believe they can reach two million Tu's on a on a part of a concession that we gave them the Panama Canal gave a concession to them or gave no the pain for that so I just want to clarify that it's a concession that we worked on for about a year before and and so it's good for them they can expand and it's good for the canal because we believe it also will draw some additional transits to the Panama Canal with these two births post-Panamax birth that they will add in the Pacific side so we we believe that one additional port will will enhance the possibilities there was also a question of what are the what else are we doing there we're looking at a rural port on the west side of the canal in the Pacific end we're looking at the further developing all of the land that we reclaim that was contaminated with the UXOs unfortunately left by the US military when they this was areas that were used for target practice and they had mortar fire and they had bazooka fire and for when we were going to do the the expansion we had to go in there and blow everything up you know detect what was what was bad and and blow it up and then cover it so now we've recovered almost a thousand hectares that were not available before you couldn't even walk into those areas now we're able to build over those areas and we plan to have a industrial park a free zone area in that and we have actually put out a tender for the master plan of that just recently last week so those are the things we're doing there and and very quickly on the railroad between Brazil and Peru you know we live in a world where there's always competition and we love competition because it makes us boost our efforts and and do better and I believe land transportation will never compete with all water services all water services are less expensive and they are less also contaminating so I believe that yes that's an option and and it may take away some business but I think we are focusing on getting other business that will not go through that route all of the LNG for example will not make it through there all the RLNG exports those three ships a day in in 2020-21 are never going to go through there so uh it's a it's an option yes some trade will be there but as we grow if the economies continue to grow we'll grow so we'll have some competition in the growth but they will not be taken on the base so I I believe we'll do fine and and we are all for you know more uh development in the logistic map of the world uh and especially if they're more efficient so just good luck well having said this and and and I just want to thank you you've been more than generous with your time you've answered every question uh completely uh so I I want to show my appreciation thank you thank the ambassador for bringing Mr Kikano here as well um it's just been a great session um would you please join me in a round of applause to thank