canal

a 4.5 billion bridge over the Panama Canal

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Panama-David. That is the name of the most important railway project in the Central American country. A 450 kilometer long route that aims to connect the country by train, crossing its width at speeds of up to 180 km/h. A route that also includes routes for the transfer of goods and that has a critical step over the most famous canal in the country. And to verify that everything is going correctly, Panama has trusted Renfe. Panama-David. It is “the flagship project” of the Panamanian Government. So, in fact, It is how the state website itself defines to the Panama-David railway line. The project aims to connect the entire country by crossing its width with a high-speed train line that can travel at 180 km/h. This railway line, which will employ more than 50,000 Panamanians, according to official information, will have 14 stations and the capacity to transport goods on rails at a maximum of 100 km/h. The plans included starting the works this year and, for this, Renfe will be key. The approval. And Renfe will be in charge of approving the technical reports that have already been developed by AECOM (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations and Management), the American company to which Panama commissioned the evaluation of the project in 2024. Now Renfe will have to certify that the project, according to the bases designed by this company, are viable. The feasibility of the planned train stations and workshops will be studied, among other aspects, but it is a bridge that is really worrying. A bridge that will cross the Panama Canal. The Bridge. At one end of the line, the fifth bridge over the Panama Canal has been planned. This bridge will be in charge of carrying the line to the border with Costa Rica, where the project ends. It is estimated that building this new step would cost about 4.5 billion dollars. From the little that is known, it has been published that the bridge would be parallel to the Centennial Bridgethe second to be built in this enclave and which was designed to relieve traffic from the Bridge of the Americas, the first to be built over the Canal. Why Renfe? They explain in the local newspaper The Press that the Panamanian Government has chosen Renfe because of the prestige that the company has when evaluating technical railway projects. The assignment falls on Renfe International Projectsthe division of the company that is responsible for offering service or advice outside our borders. In Panama they highlight that Renfe will be key to understanding if the preliminary report is viable and if the bridge can be built as planned. The company will also analyze future expansion possibilities and technical concepts such as work to be carried out underwater or evacuation routes. All of this will allow, according to the National Railway Society (SNF) of Panama, “to reduce technical and operational risks, and strengthen informed decision-making to guarantee the viability, efficiency and sustainability of the railway project.” another assignment. As we said, Renfe International Projects is the company in charge of carrying out railway work outside our borders. Last year it had a turnover of 20 million euros (the Panamanian project will bring in more than 300,000 dollars, according to local media) and its star project is the AVE to Mecca. In addition, the company is also interested in operating on the French high speed and look for your place in Italy but it is also present in Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic. Photo | André Marques and Paulo3082 In Xataka | Mexico spent a fortune building its Mayan Train to attract tourists. Things are not going as expected.

In 1967 a war closed the Suez Canal for eight years. Half a century later, the Strait of Hormuz looks into the same abyss

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When war broke out between Egypt and Israel in 1967, fifteen commercial ships were trapped in the Suez Canal. The captains dropped anchor assuming they would only have to wait a few days for the fighting to end. They were right about the duration of hostilities: it was the Six Day War. However, It took eight years for the canal to reopen. When the ships were finally able to set sail in 1975, only two were still seaworthy. The rest had rusted so much under the desert sun that They went down in history as the “Yellow Fleet”. Almost sixty years later, history rhymes in the Persian Gulf. Ninety days after the war between the United States, Israel and Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the most important maritime passage in the world remains closed. Dozens of oil tankers wait at anchor, waiting for a diplomatic agreement that always seems imminent but never arrives. The optimism trap on Wall Street The analyst Javier Blas, in your column for Bloombergexposes the dangerous complacency with which the world is facing this closure. The financial industry operates under an adapted version of Stein’s Law: “The Strait cannot be closed forever because it would cause too much economic damage; therefore, it will reopen soon.” The problem with this logic is that the economy has not yet inflicted the pain necessary to force peace. As Blas points out: For Washington: The war is proving politically cheap. The US economy is riding with quarterly growth of more than 4% and the S&P 500 index is close to historical highs, having risen almost 10% since the start of the conflict. For Tehran: Even as the currency plummets and inflation chokes the population, the Iranian regime has demonstrated for decades an almost inexhaustible capacity to absorb economic punishment when it considers it faces an existential threat. While the mediators seek an agreement in Islamabadinertia maintains the illusion of normality. The market has absorbed the disappearance of about 20 million barrels per day thanks to accumulated inventories and massive releases of strategic reserves. Qero the global tank is emptying. June: The end of logistics inertia If we do not see shortages on the streets it is due to pure physics of transportation: a supertanker moves at the speed of a bicycle. The fuel that the West consumed in the spring left the Gulf before the first missile fell. However, the data They already show the cracks in the system. Global demand fell by 5 million barrels per day in April, the largest consumption destruction since the COVID-19 pandemic. And the blow is already felt at home: Funcas warns thatIf the conflict continues, Spanish inflation will exceed 4% and growth will fall to 1.8%. In addition, the multimillion-dollar extra cost of fuel for airlines such as Iberia or Vueling directly threatens the waterline of Spanish tourism. The real precipice has a date: June. With the arrival of summer, the peak driving season and the massive use of air conditioning will collide with inventories at multi-year lows. Furthermore, a diplomatic reopening it would not solve the physical problem: Clearing the mile-wide Hormuz safe lane would require months of complex naval operations. However, the impact of this crisis goes far beyond the gas pump. As the physical shortage of crude oil becomes undeniable, the most serious repercussions are brewing in the bowels of the global financial system: The fracture of the petrodollar: The unwritten agreement of 1974, which guaranteed security in the Gulf in exchange for crude oil being sold in dollars and reinvested in US debt, is breaking down. Countries like India They are selling their US Treasury bonds to obtain liquidity and pay for much more expensive oil. The bond market: The persistence of energy inflation has skyrocketed sovereign bond yields. 30-year Treasury bonds in the US exceeded 5.15%. The cost of real life: If government bonds yield above 5%, 30-year mortgages are inexorably approaching 7%. This translates into more expensive loans, lower business investment and a paralysis of the real estate market. As several analysts warn, undoing the economic damage from Hormuz could require an induced recession to curb borrowing costs. The bypass of the desert While the world waits, some actors have already given up on Hormuz. United Arab Emirates has accelerated urgently the construction of a gigantic pipeline that bypasses the strait, with the goal of exporting 3.5 million barrels a day directly to the Gulf of Oman by 2027. It is “prudent planning for the worst scenario,” and a clear sign that Abu Dhabi believes the waterway could remain threatened for years. Half a century ago, no one imagined that 15 ships would spend a decade rotting in the sun in Suez for a war that lasted less than a week. Today, the world assumes that the Hormuz crisis will be a temporary blip. But as the days go by, the shock absorbers wear out and the financial markets creak. The oil is simply still waiting in the sea. Image | Photo by Jens Rademacher on Unsplash Xataka | The war in the East has reached an unexpected agreement: one where the US does not discuss Iran’s missiles, bombs or uranium

How the Panama Canal is being lined thanks to the war in Iran

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When an international conflict breaks out, there is always someone who manages to take advantage. As the world watches with concern the Third Gulf War, thousands of kilometers from missiles and drones, the Panama Canal has been crowned the unexpected winner of this global chaos. What began as an energy crisis in the Persian Gulf has become, for the small Central American nation, a gold mine of historic dimensions. Since the attacks triggered the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s main artery for fuel transportation, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas trade transits – maritime trade has entered a phase of genuine desperation. The urgency to move goods has reached such a point that, as confirmed by Ricaurte Vásquez Moralesadministrator of the Panama Canal, a shipping company paid 4 million dollars in an auction just to skip the line and cross the interoceanic waterway as soon as possible. The mechanism of urgency After the Hormuz blockade, traffic through the Panamanian canal has experienced a general increase of close to 11%, registering peaks of up to an additional 20% on the days of greatest demand, as reported by the Panama Canal Authority itself BBC. During the first half of fiscal year 2026 – from October 2025 to March 2026 – the channel registered 6,288 transits, 224 more than in the same period of the previous year, according to data presented by the channel authority to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In order to absorb this flow, nature has also been complicit. The deputy administrator of the channel, Ilya Espino de Marotta, explained to cnn that unusually intense rains during the dry season have kept Gatún and Alhajuela lakes at maximum levels, which has made it possible to manage between 40 and 41 daily transits compared to the usual average of 36. A notable recovery if one remembers that during the El Niño drought between 2023 and 2024, daily transits fell to 24. “The Panama Canal is open and fully operational,” assured Vásquez Morales. “Amid all the geopolitical complexities of today’s world, the Panama Canal remains open and reliable.” But the true profitability is not only in the volume, but in the price of urgency. The companies they pay a fixed rate between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars to transit with prior reservation. Those who do not have it must compete in a relentless auction system where the highest bidder takes the coveted spot. Víctor Vial, vice president of finance of the channel, detailed in the same presentation to investors that the average auction price before the crisis ranged between 135,000 and 140,000 additional dollars. After the start of the conflict, “that average increased to approximately $385,000 between March and April.” Desperation has pushed some oil companies to pay more than 3 million additional dollars to avoid waits, according to Bloomberg. The absolute record of 4 million is explained by Vásquez himself: “It was a ship that transported fuel to Europe, but they diverted it to Singapore, and it had to get there because Singapore is running out of fuel,” declared. With this extraordinary injection, Vial estimated that the growth of the channel’s income will be between 10% and 15% this year, although he warned that “we are still not doing the math or modifying our projections.” A logistical lifesaver, not a replacement The profitability of the channel is explained by the geography of the panic. More than 80% of the oil that usually transited through Hormuz was destined for the Asian continent, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). When that route was blocked, buyers from Japan, South Korea, India and China turned to the United States Gulf Coast. According to data from the maritime intelligence company Kpler cited by BloombergUS crude oil exports through the Panama Canal have exceeded 200,000 barrels per day, approaching their maximum since July 2022. The logic is implacable. A trip from the US Gulf Coast to Japan via the canal takes almost a month, while going around Africa around the Cape of Good Hope would take almost twice as long. “With all the bombings, missiles, drones, companies say it is safer and less expensive to cross through the Panama Canal,” explained Rodrigo Noriegalawyer and analyst in Panama City. “All of this is affecting global supply chains.” Despite the boom, experts are categorical when comparing both routes. The EIA data, updated as of March 2026illustrate it crudely: in the first half of 2025, 20.9 million barrels of oil per day transited the Strait of Hormuz, compared to the 2.3 million that crossed the Panama Canal in its entire fiscal year 2025. A ratio of almost one to nine. Furthermore, VLCC-type supertankers—capable of transporting up to two million barrels in a single trip—are simply too big for the Panamanian locks, as both France 24 and OilPrice point out. Panama is a golden shortcut, but it does not have the muscles to replace the massive flow of the Persian Gulf. Marc Gilbert, global leader of the Geopolitics Center at Boston Consulting Group, summed it up: “What is really happening is that energy from the United States is replacing the volumes that cargoes from the Gulf previously sent to Asia.” And he added that what this crisis shows is that “when a sea lane fails, the entire system must adapt.” From economic bonanza to diplomatic minefield Panama’s sudden strategic prominence has not gone unnoticed by the great powers. As reported by Al JazeeraWashington and its allies accused China at the end of April of applying “selective economic pressure”, retaining dozens of Panamanian-flagged ships in Chinese ports in retaliation for the annulment, by the Panamanian Supreme Court, of a port concession that a company linked to Hong Kong maintained over the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal. Beijing categorically denied the accusations. The spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lin Jian, described them as statements that “lack foundation and distort reality”, and in turn accused the United … Read more

China has turned the Arctic into its own “Panama Canal.” And that explains the US obsession with Greenland

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It seems like it was centuries ago, but until not too long ago the Arctic was seen as an inhospitable territory, more associated with school maps and scientific expeditions than with great power disputes. However, accelerated thaw and the changes in routes navigation have turned that apparently marginal region into one of the most sensitive spaces on the geopolitical board, one where decisions made today can define the economic and military balance of the coming decades. Stop being peripheral. Yes, for decades, the Arctic was a space remote, frozen and secondary in global geopolitics, a natural border that separated blocks rather than connecting them, but accelerated thaw has transformed that white void into a strategic corridor where trade, resources and military deterrence overlap. What was once a physical boundary is now an emerging highway that shortens thousands of kilometers between Asia, Europe and North America, and that simple climate change is reordering strategic priorities of the great powers at a speed that has caught many governments off guard. China and the Polar Route. China has identified before anyone else the potential of these new routes and has integrated them into its long-term vision as a “Polar Silk Road”conceived as a functional equivalent to the Panama Canal or the Suez Canalbut under much more flexible conditions because the rules are not yet set. Chinese research vessels, experimental freighters and icebreakers they are already browsing through the High North, collecting oceanographic data, mapping seabeds and testing routes that reduce by half travel times between Asia and Europe, while establishing a presence that, as happened in the South China Sea, begins as scientific and commercial and ends up having inevitable military implications. Submarines, data and war under the ice. The most disturbing element for Washington and its allies is not only trade, but the underground: The Arctic Ocean offers ideal conditions for underwater warfare, with layers of water, variable salinity, and natural noise making sonar detection difficult. The dives of Chinese research submarines under the ice, together with the deployment of “civilian” vessels that in practice function as covert military platforms, point to a clear objective: break the historic American submarine superiority and prepare the ground so that, in the future, Chinese nuclear submarines can operate near the North American continent with greater freedom and less risk. The Sino-Russian alliance. Chinese expansion in the Arctic is amplified by its understanding with Russiawhich provides experience, technology and access to already exploited routes along its northern coast, while receiving in return key industrial and technological support to sustain its war in Ukraine. This axis turns the Arctic into a space where two nuclear powers They coordinate in their own way air, naval and potentially submarine patrols, opening the door to a scenario that was unthinkable during the Cold War: Asian forces with the capacity to rapidly project themselves towards the Atlantic without passing through easily monitored bottlenecks. Greenland as a hinge. In this context, Greenland stops being a frozen and sparsely populated island and become the hinge that controls the eastern flank of the Northwest Passage, the gateway from Europe to that future Arctic highway. Whoever has decisive influence over Greenland can monitor, condition or even block maritime and submarine traffic in one of the most sensitive routes of the 21st century, in addition to housing radars, airports and key sensors for the defense of the American continent. The emergencies. Here comes the Trump’s renewed interest to take over Greenland, which does not respond to an eccentricity or a nineteenth-century imperial impulse, but rather to the recognition of an emerging strategic vulnerability. Washington watches how Beijing advances in the Arctic the same way he did in other settings: arriving early, coming to the table when the rules do not yet exist, and securing positions which then become almost impossible to reverse, which explains the pressure on Denmark, the enlargement of icebreaking capabilities and closer integration of the High North into NATO planning. No locks. In summary, and unlike the Panama Canal, the Arctic is not a closed infrastructure nor regulated by consolidated treaties, but rather a space under construction where the early presence defines future power. For the United States to allow China to consolidate a dominant position on these routes would be to accept that its geographic and naval advantage can be eroded without a single shot, simply by letting the ice melt and others write the rules. Greenland thus appears as the last piece of a bigger puzzle: one where it is not about buying or invading an island, but about deciding who controls trafficsecurity and the balance of power in the next great axis of global trade and war. Image | RawPixel In Xataka | A document clarifies “the Greenland thing” since 1951. Hitler’s Germany made an agreement possible for the US to do whatever it wants In Xataka | The gold of the 21st century is not in Venezuela: China and Russia know it and that is why the US wants Greenland no matter what

Panama alerts the UN due to Washington’s threat over the canal

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The Panamanian government expressed this Tuesday to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, its concern about the statement by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, that he will seek to regain control of the Panama Canal. In a letter, distributed to the press byr the Panamanian Foreign Ministry, Panama’s permanent mission to the UN tells Guterres that Trump’s statements on Monday in his inauguration speech “are worrying.” “We request your good offices to transmit this communication to the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council,” of which Panama has been a part since January 1, stressed the letter, which summarizes Trump’s statements and the Panamanian government’s response. Trump reiterated in his speech on Monday what he had already said in recent weeks, that his government is going to “recover” the Panama Canal, under Panamanian sovereignty for 25 years, due to the alleged presence of China in the interoceanic waterway. “China operates the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we are going to get it back,” Trump said. “The canal is and will continue to be Panama’s” The Panamanian president, José Raúl Mulino, responded that “the canal is and will continue to belong to Panama.” The Panama Canal, built by the United States and inaugurated in 1914, has this North American country and China as its two largest users. The United States handed it over to Panama in December 1999 in compliance with the treaties signed in 1977 by then-President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General Omar Torrijos. Keep reading: . Trump expresses disdain for Latin American countries: “We don’t need them”. How much control of the Panama Canal does China really have?. Donald Trump promises to recover the Panama Canal and rename the Gulf of Mexico

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