Dive Brief:
- Freight may move slowly through the narrow locks of the Panama Canal, but it moves a lot faster than the canal owner, the Panama Canal Authority, and the company building the canal expansion, Groupo Unidos por El Canal are in settling a money fight.
- Groupo Unidos is threatening to stop work Jan. 20 if the authority does not fork over $1 billion from the contingency fund to cover cost overruns. The authority says there is a procedure in the construction contract for settling disputes, and the builder is ignoring the proper process.
- All this comes after a Jan. 7 meeting about how to work out things.
Dive Insight:
At this rate, the authority and Groupo Unidos could make the U.S. Congress look like a cooperative body. The authority says the threat of a work stoppage has to go away before anything else can happen, shifting the focus from the money to the method the contractor is using. The consortium says it has used the claims process to the tune of $1.4 billion and has been rebuffed on every one. The job is already on a revised schedule and now is not expected to meet that.
