Last week's opening of the expanded Panama Canal is unlikely to do much to lift the spirits of the LNG shipping industry. The addition of a third lane will create a faster, and cheaper, way of getting US LNG to Asia. Around 90% of the world's LNG fleet will be able to transit the newly expanded waterway, with the first tanker, British Merchant, scheduled to pass through on Jul. 26 from Trinidad and Tobago to Chile. But the third lane's six new daily booking slots are not dedicated specifically to LNG. If the industry could secure one slot per day, about 26 million tons of LNG per year could move through the waterway. But delegates at an LNG shipping conference last week aren't optimistic.
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