The Panama Canal Authority is considering closing the east lane of the canal at the Gatun Lock for 10 days from 9-18 May for scheduled preventative maintenance.
The Authority told Argus that it will confirm the outage approximately four to five days prior.
The Authority has reduced the number of vessel booking slots during this period. The canal's west lane will remain open allowing for southbound and northbound traffic to continue to pass. There will not be restrictions on the size of vessels operating in the west lane.
The number of Neopanamax transits spiked in January to 160. Neopanamaxes utilized 78pc of their available slots in January.
"The Canal coordinates the maintenance in order [to] minimize impact to transit capacity," a representative for the canal said.
