New Suez Canal

New Suez Canal
Specifications
Length	35 km (22 miles)
Locks	None
Status	Open
Navigation authority	Suez Canal Authority
History
Original owner	Suez Canal Authority
Principal engineer	Egyptian Armed Forces (EAAF)
Other engineer(s)	The Arab Contractors Orascom Construction Industries 84 other companies
Construction began	5 August 2014
Date of first use	6 August 2015
Date completed	16 July 2015
Geography
Branch of	Suez Canal (Length 193.30 km)

The New Suez Canal (Arabic: قناة السويس الجديدة‎‎ Qanāt al-Suways al-Jadīdah) is the name of a waterway project in Egypt, to expand the capacity of the existing Suez Canal.

Overview

The project adds a new 35-kilometre-long (22 mi) second shipping lane in the existing 164-kilometre-long (102 mi) canal, allowing for separated passing of ships in opposite directions. It also includes the deepening and expansion of a 37-kilometre-long (23 mi) section of the existing canal.

The enlarged capacity allows ships to sail in both directions at the same time over much of the canal's length. Beforehand, much of the canal was only one shipping lane wide, with limited wider basins for passing. This is expected to decrease waiting time from 11 hours to 3 hours for most ships, and to increase the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day.

Technical difficulties initially arose, such as the flooding of the new canal through seepage from the existing canal. Nevertheless, work on the New Suez Canal was completed in July 2015. The channel was officially inaugurated with a ceremony attended by foreign leaders and featuring military flyovers on 6 August 2015, in accordance with the budgets laid out for the project.

Point	Coordinates
Northern End
Southern End

Benefits, costs, and risks

See also: Lessepsian migration

Egyptian officials especially the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Vice-Admiral Mohab Mamish claimed that the $8.2 billion project, which expands capacity to 97 ships per day, will more than double annual revenues to some $13.5 billion by 2023. That, however, would require yearly growth of some 10%, some would say an optimistic projection given that in the entire period from 2000 to 2013 world seaborne shipping grew by just 37%, according to UNCTAD. A recent forecast from the IMF suggests that in the decade up to 2016 the annual rate of growth for global merchandise trade will have averaged 3.4%.

About 18 scientists writing in the academic journal Biological Invasions in 2014 expressed concern about the project impacting the biodiversity and the ecosystem services of the Mediterranean Sea. They called on Egypt to assess the environmental effects that the canal expansion could cause, a request echoed by the executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Over 1,000 invasive species have entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal since its original construction in the mid-19th century, with human activities becoming a leading cause of the decline of the sea's biodiversity, according to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

Initially, the project was to be financed through a stock market IPO, allowing partial private ownership of the project. However, the government quickly changed its financing strategy, relying on interest-bearing investment certificates that do not confer any ownership rights to investors. The certificates were issued by the Suez Canal Authority with an interest rate of 12%.

Revenues

The government has blocked access to the official revenues reports for three months after the opening. It then published two reports for August and September, which showed consecutive decreases in the total Suez Canal revenues by 10% or $150 million.

See also

• Suez Canal Area Development Project
• Canal Istanbul

External links

• Diagram