International canal

Panama Canal

Two important shipping routes the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal are facing blockages.

It is a lock-type canal, owned and administered by the Republic of Panama.

Lock-type canal is a system in which an enclosure or basin located in the course of a canal or a river (or in the vicinity of a dock) with gates at each end, within which the water level may be varied to raise or lower boats.

The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama.

Panama Canal is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal.

From its opening in 1914 until 1979, the Panama Canal was controlled solely by the United States, which built it.
In 1979, however, control of the canal passed to the Panama Canal Commission, a joint agency of the United States and the Republic of Panama, and complete control passed to Panama in 1999.
The Panama Canal lies at a latitude of 9° N, at a point where the North American Continental Divide dips to one of its lowest points.
The canal does not cross the isthmus from east to west but runs due south from its entrance at Colón on the Atlantic side through the Gatún Locks to a point in the widest portion of Gatún Lake.

Traffic through the Panama Canal is a barometer of world trade, rising in times of world economic prosperity and declining in times of recession.

Suez Canal

It is a sea-level waterway running north-south across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt to connect to the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
The canal separates the African continent from Asia, and it provides the shortest maritime route between Europe and the lands lying around the Indian and western Pacific oceans.
The canal extends between Port Said in the north and Suez in the south, with dredged approach channels north of Port Said, into the Mediterranean, and south of Suez.
To the west of the canal is the low-lying delta of the Nile River, and to the east is the higher, rugged, and arid Sinai Peninsula.
The Suez Canal is an open cut canal system without the locks system.

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