MAP COURTESY CIA WORLD FACT BOOK. MOST LIKELY ROUTE IS SECOND FROM THE TOP OF ROUTES OUTLINES IN RED
American Admiralty Books Safety & Privacy Policies EU VISITORS WARNING POSSIBLE COOKIES AHEADNicaragua is attempting to build a 161 mile long canal across the country linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. If it ever actually is completed the Nicaragua Canal would be longer, wider, and deeper than the present 51 mile long Panama Canal. Supposedly the new canal could accommodate the new larger container ships that presently can't get through the Panama Canal. But there are real reasons to doubt that the project can ever be completed. There is also the issue of even if it can be completed,will it deliver on its economic promise to double the gross domestic product of Nicaragua.While construction has started at least in the form of access roads the most preliminary of studies for a civil work of this magnitude have yet to be started. The project must cut through a lake that provides more than half of the fresh water for the nation. Yet, the canal is supposed to be a sea level canal with no locks. How will the salt water be kept out of the lake. The canal builders have already vowed that they will not use explosives in dredging the through lake channel, yet the lake bottom is known to be rocky, what alternative technology do they think they will use? The financing of the canal is unsettled and the astronomical costs as yet accurately estimated. VOX.Com has put together an up to date analysis that we link you to in the above title and via conventional link below. We agree with the Vox assessment. The canal is being financed by a Chinese billionaire but it is unclear if his entire net worth would be sufficient to complete the project. It seems more likely that in the Chinese crony capitalist system that is jokingly called "communism" today the publicly announced plan and the observable but hardly impressive "construction start" may have no real purpose except to give China a new inroad into Central America and cause anxiety in certain American governmental and public sectors.Click on either link , read the entire article and decide for yourself. Our analysts don't think the canal will become a reality.