Big Plans for the “Big Ditch”

As originally constructed, the Suez Canal had a surface width of almost 230 feet. It was 72 feet wide at the bottom and had a depth of 26 feet. However, the waterway has been widened and deepened several times to accommodate larger vessels. Hence, it now has a depth of 46 feet and a surface width of over 390 feet. When the canal is in use, ships move in both directions, though most of the waterway has only one-lane traffic. Vessels are arranged in convoys and pass in the wider lake areas or the seven-mile Balah Bypass.

If Egypt carries through present plans, however, the “Big Ditch” will become much bigger. It will be expanded to a width of 520 navigable feet and a 62-foot depth by 1978, and to a navigable width of 630 feet and a 77-foot depth by the 1980’s. Suez and Port Said are to become free ports.

About two years ago, a United Nations study revealed that the closing of the Suez Canal has cost the world 1.7 billion dollars annually in greater shipping expenses and lost trade. So, the reopened waterway undoubtedly would have a profound effect on world trade and economics. It would be likely to help such lands as Somalia and the Sudan, which once used the canal to get 60 percent of their exports to foreign markets and were obliged to end European fruit sales when it was closed. The canal’s reopening also would benefit such Mediterranean ports as Barcelona and Marseilles.

Great quantities of oil are likely to be transported through the reopened Suez Canal. Of course, even the prospective enlarging of the waterway will not enable it to accommodate certain supertankers. Yet, the size of about a third of the world’s oil tankers would allow them to go through the “Big Ditch.” Such vessels can make a trip from Persian Gulf ports to points in western Europe in some sixteen days by using the Suez Canal, compared to thirty days if they circled the Cape of Good Hope.