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to 45 feet so that the river, with its six-foot tidal range, can handle Neo-Panamax vessels with heavier loads than it now can transport.


• Baltimore, with its bigger Chesapeake Bay turning circle, which has already deepened its channel to the 50-foot post-Panamax standard, has purchased beefy new, larger tugboats and taller, broader-reach containerization cranes to handle big Neo-Panamax ships. Over the last year, Baltimore has seen 50-foot draft vessels that came through the Suez Canal reach its port to be handled by those bigger tugs.


• Farther south, Norfolk already has deepened to 50 feet and advertises that it can handle not just Neo-Panamax vessels but the biggest ships that sail through the Suez Canal.


• Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA, engaged in a lengthy political argument over which port could best benefit from Corps of Engineers investment, are both now dredging their ports’ shipping channels deeper.


• Miami already deepened its channel, dug a tunnel under Biscayne Bay to connect its port to the Interstate Highway system, and rebuilt a storm-damaged rail bridge to support freight rail access. And just days after the expanded canal’s opening, the Japanese-owned Mitsui O.S.K. Lines vessel MOL Majesty, at 990.81 feet long and 142.39 feet wide, made Miami the first East Coast port to see a Neo-Panamax ship arrive via the canal’s new locks.


Energy Moves through the Canal


According to Canal Authority personnel, the U.S. shale energy revolution is promoting U.S.-originated canal traffic that they never expected.


Interviewed at Authority headquarters, José Ramón Arango S., Senior Specialist, Liquid Bulk Segment, pointed out that “the Panama Canal has always been heavily involved in energy shipments.” But today, he said, the rush of new reservations for ship transits through the expanded canal is almost all from the U.S. And potential new U.S. energy ports abound:


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of liquefied petroleum gas, a byproduct of natural gas processing and petroleum refining.


4. On the East Coast, Virginia-based Dominion Energy is racing to complete conversion of its Cove Point, MD, LNG terminal to export capability. Cove Point’s original customer, India’s Gail Corporation, is to be served through the Suez Canal, but Dominion executive Don Raikes, speaking at several U.S. energy conferences, made it clear Dominion also plans to serve customers in the Far East.


5. At Marcus Hook, PA, south of


7. Sunoco Logistics, also looking to the future, recently revealed plans to move Utica Shale condensate, or light crude, from eastern Ohio to Marcus Hook over its Mariner East pipeline system.


8. On an island off Savannah, GA, an existing Williams Company LNG import terminal is undergoing federal regulatory review for conversion to export methane flowing south through the Transcontinental Pipeline, which was built to carry Gulf Coast gas to northern cities but now handles two-way traffic, hauling abundant Marcellus Shale gas supplies from Pennsylvania south.


HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | FALL 2016 33


1. Cheniere Energy, whose Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas terminal was the first of several American Gulf Coast LNG export terminals to go online, is expected to be joined by terminals nearby in Louisiana and also in Texas. Sourcing its gas from Cabot Energy’s Susquehanna County, PA, fields, Cheniere sent its first tanker through the canal in March, Arango said.


2. Now, with the expansion project finished, Cheniere has sent its first large LNG tanker through the canal’s new locks as well.


3. Another Cheniere terminal is being developed at Corpus Christi, TX, with more firm supply orders from Cabot’s Pennsylvania wells, while still another terminal is in development off the west coast of Florida. Still other Gulf ports are ramping up to ship large quantities


Philadelphia, still another LNG terminal— this one built by Sunoco to move the natural gas liquids butane, ethane, and propane—is rising on land that had for a century been home to the East Coast’s oldest oil refinery.


6. In Philadelphia, executives at the East’s biggest refinery, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, made a bid to build an oil export‒import terminal at the developing SouthPort, on the old Navy Yard grounds. PES already imports crude oil and exports refined products through Sunoco’s existing Fort Mifflin Terminal on the Delaware. But with delivery of up to four 100-car “unit trains” of crude each day from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale and plans afoot for a cross-country oil pipeline coming east, Philadelphia Energy is thinking ahead.


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