Cotton & Western Mining Inc. (CWRN)

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They work the dredging on a rotating basis so as to minimally interfere w shipping-thus the ship that unloaded the pet coke is at dock while 2 dredgers work behind it.
So THE DREDGING SHOULD NOT INTERFERE W HANDYMAX CLASS VESSEL w average drafts of 33 feet.

Officially Port depth is 40'-see the port video link posted by somebody a few days ago. And Panamax vessels are limited to a draft of 12.04 meters (ca 39 feet),for shallowest part of Panama canal(thus the Panamax class of ships) is ca 40 feet.

So Panamax could negotiate channel NOW unless there has been a significant drift since the last dredging-- and depth cannot be guaranteed in the vicinity of the actively operated dredger. I presume they are using an abundance of caution.

Reports indicate they intend to dredge up to ca 15 meters(ca 49 feet)which would place them among the deepest ports(deepest west coast I could find was Long Beach extending terminal to increase depth to 53 feet).

The dredging is a forward looking operation looking toward the time Panama Canal deepening is finished(target date 2014)at which time draft and width of Panamax class vessels will be increased commensurately.

So ports are deepening from the previous normal deep water standard(determined by Panama canal depth) of 40 ft depth(another more loose standard calls any port over 7.5 m or 25 feet deep water-the 2nd busiest world port is only 7 meters and has to offload to shallower vessels as the barges will do for CWRN until the new mining bulk loading terminal is finished)to a future standard of 50'. Future 5th and 6th generation cargo vessels are expected to have a draft of 50 feet or more.