<story><title>Cheap oil is taking shipping routes back to the 1800s</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160303-cheap-oil-is-taking-shipping-routes-back-to-the-1800s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gleenn</author><text>Really sad that economics makes a bunch of massive ships travel thousands of miles out of their way, burning tons of extra fuel, just because a bunch of guys charge way too much to drive through a canal that was built a long time ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slyall</author><text>Egypt spent around $8 billion on a Suez Canal expansion in 2014 &amp;amp; 2015 in order to double the Canal&amp;#x27;s capacity.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;New_Suez_Canal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;New_Suez_Canal&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Cheap oil is taking shipping routes back to the 1800s</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160303-cheap-oil-is-taking-shipping-routes-back-to-the-1800s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gleenn</author><text>Really sad that economics makes a bunch of massive ships travel thousands of miles out of their way, burning tons of extra fuel, just because a bunch of guys charge way too much to drive through a canal that was built a long time ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mathattack</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s put externalities (CO2, etc) aside...&lt;p&gt;The only reason that things like canals get built is because people can charge money to recoup their costs.  Many infrastructure projects get built and don&amp;#x27;t earn their capital investment back. (One might argue most)  The reason people still build them is a few are enormously profitable.&lt;p&gt;Once &amp;quot;going the long way&amp;quot; gets significantly cheaper, the folks in charge of the canal will lower their price so that equilibrium still means going through them.</text></comment>