{"id":17530,"date":"2016-08-22T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=17530"},"modified":"2016-08-23T10:50:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T15:50:27","slug":"tide-turns-against-middle-east-as-enlarged-panama-canal-takes-bigger-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/tide-turns-against-middle-east-as-enlarged-panama-canal-takes-bigger-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"Tide turns against Middle East as enlarged Panama Canal takes bigger ships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AEGEAN_UNITY\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As it nudged its way out of the Lago de Miraflores and into the lush green heart of Panama on Thursday, the Aegean Unity<\/i>, a Greek-flagged supertanker, must have looked an ordinary enough sight to the casual observer.<\/p>\n

However, the passage of the vessel, carrying a cargo of 700,000 barrels of Ecuadorean crude oil into the Panama Canal, marked a historic moment for global trade.<\/p>\n

The Aegean Unity <\/i>was the first giant Suezmax-class tanker to pass through the canal in its 102-year history, after a $5 billion expansion project that was completed six weeks ago.<\/p>\n

When French and American engineers carved the canal out of the jungle an estimated 25,000 workers died during its construction \u2014 mostly from tropical diseases such as yellow fever and malaria.<\/p>\n

The spiralling cost of the project pushed its original French backer into bankruptcy. But for all of their efforts, the canal\u2019s original developer simply never imagined the huge scale of the megaships to come.<\/p>\n

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