Panama Canal expansion opening pushed to June

The Panama Canal's expansion project will be inaugurated June 26, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) announced last week.

The expansion program, which calls for adding two new sets of locks on the Pacific and Atlantic sides of the canal, is now 97 percent complete, PCA officials said in a press release.

Final testing will be conducted in the coming weeks, leading up to the official inauguration in June.

The announcement came during the inauguration ceremony of the canal's "Scale Model Maneuvering Training Facility," which is aimed at providing pilots and tugboat captains additional hands-on experience to ensure they're ready to operate in the expanded canal.

The 35.3-acre facility features two lakes connected by a channel modeled after the canal's Culebra Cut.

In January, Panama President Juan Carlos Varela said the expansion project was slated to wrap up around the month of May.