Capacity of Key Strategic Passages
While the bulk of global maritime trade takes place on open seas, the configuration of continental masses coupled with patterns of market, production and resource extraction forces a convergence of maritime trade at three major bottlenecks; the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca. Their physical characteristics dictate the volume and capacity of ships transiting through them. The capacity of a passage in deadweight tons (dwt) does not relates effectively with the capacity in TEU. For instance, a 220,000 dwt containership would have a capacity of about 20,000 TEU and a draft of 16.5 meters while a similar tanker would have a draft reaching 21 meters. The reason behind this lies in the cargo density, also known as the stowage factor, which is the ratio between cargo volume and cargo weight. For containers the average cargo density is about 3 cubic meters per ton, while for oil and iron ore this ratio is 1.1 and 0.44 cubic meters per ton respectively.
Panama
|
Suez
|
Malacca
| |
Minimum depth
|
12 meters (40 feet)
|
16 meters (58 feet)
|
21 meters (68 feet)
|
Length
|
64 km
|
190 km
|
800 km
|
Standard
|
Panamax
|
Suez-Max
|
Malacca-Max
|
Capacity
|
65,000 dwt
|
210,000 dwt
|
240,000 dwt
|
TEU
|
4,800
|
12,000
|
20,000
|
Transit time
|
16.5 hours
|
10 to 12 hours
|
20 hours
|
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