Suez Canal To Take Larger Ships

Improvements to the Suez Canal will allow ships with a draft of up to 62 ft. to use the waterway by the end of next year, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said The canal will be able to take ships with a draft of 66 ft. by 2005 and 72 ft. by 2010, Ahmed Fadhel said. "These drafts will enable the canal to accept giant oil tankers of up to 360,000 tons, which is currently the largest tanker weight in the world," he said. Fadhel said oil pipelines in the region that are now closed or operating below capacity could provide fierce competition for the Suez Canal if reopened or used to their full extent. "If political developments in the region lead these pipelines to operate at full capacity it will deprive the Suez Canal of most oil tankers," Fadhel said. "We have given long-haul journeys fee reductions of 80 percent and the authority also offered new reductions for gas tankers in the first half of the current year of five to 35 percent, according to tanker size." He did not disclose what fees the authority planned to charge in 2000, but said it intended to raise annual revenue, which slipped four percent in fiscal 1998/9 (July-June), by increasing the weight of ships using the canal. "We are interested in increasing the weight, not the number of ships since that's the basis for fees," he said. The canal notched a rise in receipts in August to $153.7 million from $149 million in July, official figures show.