Owner | ACP (Autoridad del Canal de Panama) |
Contractor | 1st Lot: GUPC (Grupo Unidos por el Canal) SACYR - SALINI - IMPREGILO - JAN DE NULA - CUSA 2nd Lot: PAC 4 ICA-FCC-MECO consortium |
Duration of work | 2010 - 2015 |
The Panama Canal Expansion is the largest project ever sincets original construction. The project will create a new lane of traffic along the Canal thanks to the construction of a new set of locks, doubling the waterways capacity. The overall work has a cost of US$ 5.25 billion and consists in four main projects: construction of the new locks, building the new Pacific access channel, dredging the waterway and raising the Gatun lake maximum operational level.
The Canal expansion work officially began in 2007 with dry excavations of a 6,1 km long access channel with 50 million m3 of material hollowed, that will link the new set of locks on the Pacific side to Culebra Cut, a man-made channel linking up Gatun lake.
The new Pacific access channel allows to bypass the Miraflores lake and will operate 9 meters above the existing channel; for this reason a 2.3 km-long dam is also being built to separate lake waters from those of the new channel.