Nicaragua Canal

Nicaragua Canal

The Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal is a proposed waterway through Nicaragua to connect the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Such a canal would follow rivers up to Lake Nicaragua and then be constructed to cut some 10+km through the isthmus of Rivas to reach the Pacific.

Such construction of a canal along the route using the San Juan River was proposed in the early colonial era. Louis Napoleon wrote an article about its feasibility in the early 19th century. Plans by the United States to build such a canal were abandoned in the early 20th century, after it purchased the French interests in the Panama Canal at a reasonable cost.

Speculation on a new canal continues, however; the steady increase in world shipping, together with the possibility of establishing shorter shipping routes, may make this an economically viable project. Alternatively, a railway, or a combined railway and oil pipeline, could be built to link ports on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Nicaragua has let contracts to Korean developers to construct a deepwater port and facilities at Monkey Point on the Atlantic coast to improve capacity there.