The United States and Panama signed a free trade agreement on Monday that, if approved by the legislative bodies of both countries, will greatly affect the ability of U.S. firms to participate in the planned $5.25-billion expansion to the Panama Canal. ACP Expansion will be a boon for dredge equipment suppliers. The two countries initiated free trade talks two years ago but the agreement was delayed until after a referendum in Panama last November that gave the green-light the canal expansion. The U.S. is Panama's largest trading partner and trade between the two reached $2.5 billion in 2005, a 22
Panamanian officials are optimistic about prospects for infrastructure development in the wake of the recently approved expansion of the Panama Canal. They include a number of projects tied to the expansion, and some secondary level jobs. Speakers at the Oct. 26 U.S.-Panama Business Council’s meeting, in Washington D.C., said a strong GDP and increasing foreign investment have set the stage for a construction boom. H.E. Alejandro Ferrer, minister of commerce and industry, said Panama needs a major investment in infrastructure over the next several years. Fred Berger, senior vice president of Louis Berger Group, East Orange, N.J., says, “secondary economic
The people of Panama have given the go-ahead to the most extensive overhaul of one of the modern world’s greatest engineering achievements. On Sunday, Oct. 22, almost 80 percent of voters approved a referendum that will allow a $5.25-billion expansion of the Panama Canal to proceed. The project consists of building a new lane of traffic along the existing canal through the construction of a new set of locks. In an interview the day after the referendum, Alberto Alemán Zubieta, the administrator of the Panama Canal Authority (or ACP), the autonomous government agency that maintains the waterway, said the project
Photo:C.J. Schexnayder CAMPOS NOVOS, Brazil – The photo on the wall at the Campos Novos job site in Southern Brazil is impressive. It shows the the third tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world holding a full reservoir and waiting for its powerplant to go online. If all had gone as planned, that would have occurred in December of this year. But all didn’t go as planned. Late in June, just days after the photo was taken, a failure in one of the two tunnels built to divert the Canoas River during the 626-ft-tall (202 meters) dam’s construction allowed the
The end of the tunnel finally met the light last Friday. After eighteen months — five morethan originally planned due to a pair of roof collapses — the $11.5 million WIRTH-built tunnel boring machine broke through after drilling an 11.2-kilometer tunnel through a more than 2,400-meter-high mountain in Central Ecuador. Photo:San Fransico Project JV After 18 months, TBM holes through The tunnel, 7.0 meters in diameter, is part of the $314.6-million San Francisco Hydroelectric Project being constructed by an Odebrecht-led consortium. The completed tunnel will connect the existing 156-MW Agoyán powerplant to the new 230 MW hydroelectric powerplant, both on
Lima, Peru � A Brazilian consortium constructing a dam in Southern Brazil has come up with a plan to repair the damage that led to a failure in the structure�s diversion tunnels that led to the draining of the facility�s reservoir in June. The $523.9-million Campos Novos Dam was slated to go fully on-line this month but on June 20, two of three gates on a diversion tunnel built to divert the flow of the Canoas River failed. Officials now estimate more than 1 billion cubic meters of water from the reservoir flowed downstream and was captured by the reservoir
Second tallest dam in Brazil, but it doesn’t hold water. A diversion tunnel for recently built dam in Brazil failed during the last week in June, causing an uncontrolled release of the water from the huge upstream reservoir. The failure caused no loss of life and contractors assert that the dam’s main structure is intact, but the event is raising alarms from international environmental groups and sparking concerns about additional delays in the project, which is already well behind schedule. The 626-foot (202-meter) Campos Novos dam ( see diagram) in the Santa Catarina region of southern Brazil is the world’s
Palacios When former Equadoran President Lucio Gutierrez was forced from office last year, his vice president, Alfredo Palacio, became the head of state. He became the seventh president of the country in eight years and his administration’s 20-month mandate was clear – stability. Civil Engineer Derlis Palacios, who has more than two decades experience in the country’s construction sector, was tapped to head the Ministry of Public Works which oversees the country’s long neglected highway system. Covering 107,000 square miles, Ecuador is slightly larger than Colorado, but the country has only 27,000 miles of roadway compared to the Rocky Mountain
The proposed $5.25-billion upgrade to the Panama Canal both Panama and Colombia racing to implement major seaport upgrades in an effort to capitalize on the expected surge in shipping. �We stand to benefit enormously because our ports are adjacent to both ends of the canal,� said Colombia�s Transportation Minister Andres Uriel. �The impact to world commerce with the expansion of the canal will benefit the entire region of its direct influence.� The proposed canal expansion will involve the construction of a third shipping lane to the 80-kilometer long waterway and the building of a new set of locks. When completed
As Colombia tries to convince foreign investors that there are enticing business opportunities at hand, the specter of the four-decade-long civil conflict hovers in the background of every discussion. Every year, more than 3,000 people are killed and hundreds are taken hostage by the guerillas. Infrastructure development projects are a ripe target–a prospect that means increased risk and increased costs for investors.t Guarding infrastructure projects helped push defense spending is at record level. (Photo courtesy of AP) Despite this sobering backdrop, many are optimistic in light of President Alvaro Uribe’s efforts to control the conflict and increase security. The administration’s
