Panama Canal Transit Fees. Do you know how to calculate them?
- Timothy Beggans
- Mar 25
- 2 min read
Let us look at the Panama Canal, a critical pathway for US Gulf Coast LNG shipments to reach Asian markets. Every year approximately 5% of global trade passes through the Panama Canal locks. So how much does it cost an LNG tanker to transit this waterway? A quick peek at how to calculate an approximate LNG transit fee and where to find more information.
First, where can we find a good Panama Canal Toll Calculator? Let’s go to https://www.wilhelmsen.com/tollcalculators/panama-toll-calculator/
We need some information first so let us pick a vessel. We can scan the US Gulf Coast LNG facilities and find one. Let’s go to the global vessel tracking map at Marinetraffic.com: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:25.0/zoom:4. Let us pick a vessel currently loading at the Sabine Pass LNG facility, the Rioja Knutsen.
The information we need can be found on the Vessel details tab. We need the length overall (LOA) and the width of the vessel. For the calculator, we also need the cubic meters (m3) of the vessel which Google can easily provide. Now that we have this information we can plug it into the calculator. In the calculator, these are the exact steps:
1. Select Vessel Type: LNG Carriers.
2. Select Lock Type: Neopanamax.
3. Enter the m3 value for the vessel. In this case, we can use 176,300 for the Rioja Knutsen LNG tanker.
4. Select Ship Status: Laden (loaded) or Ballast (empty). Let us select Laden.
5. Enter LOA (overall length) in meters: For this vessel it is 290 meters.
6. Enter Beam (diameter) in meters: For this vessel we round up to 47 meters.
7. Hit “Calculate.”
For example, this returns an estimated transit fee of ~$763,000. Now, some of the charges like freshwater are variable and subject to change. The Lake Gatun water levels determine the freshwater surcharge. We can find the water levels here: https://evtms-rpts.pancanal.com/eng/h2o/index.html
Currently reservoir levels are above last year and the five-year average, so fees are low. We can use the fresh water surcharge calculator located here: https://apps.pancanal.com/t/TI/views/GatunH2OIndicators/GatunWaterLevel?%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aembed=y
You can dive deeper into this important waterway on their App (Canal de Panama) as well as the following links:
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