- The Panama Canal has capped daily transits at 34 ships since Sept. 3 and will cut that to 32 on Sept. 15, as an intensifying El Niño has left rainfall across the canal's watershed about 34% below normal since May.
- A Panama-flagged gas carrier, operated by South Korea's SK Gas, paid a record $5.3 million in a late-August auction to skip the queue — nearly $700,000 more than a record set just weeks earlier.
- The squeeze is compounding a separate, months-long disruption at the Strait of Hormuz, intermittently shut since Iran closed it in response to February's U.S.-Israeli strikes, which has pushed more oil and gas cargo toward the Americas and the Panama route.
- Grocery staples like tomatoes and coffee spiked sharply this spring, but the most current federal data (through July) shows that spike easing — even as shipping analysts warn the new canal costs haven't fully reached shelves yet.
Only 34 ships a day are now allowed to cross the Panama Canal, a limit that falls again to 32 on Sept. 15 — and the cut is landing at the worst possible moment, just as vessels normally routed through a blockaded Strait of Hormuz are piling into the same narrow waterway. Two of the planet's busiest shipping arteries are effectively squeezing traffic at once, and freight analysts say the extra cost of moving cargo is already working its way toward supermarket shelves.
