Egypt struggles to unblock giant merchant ship blocking Suez Canal

Egyptian tugs have been working since Thursday morning to free the giant container ship trapped in the Suez Canal and it interrupts the flow on one of the busiest maritime trade routes in the world.

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said it was attempting to refloat the MV Ever Given, a 400-meter-long vessel that strayed from course and ran aground in a sandstorm in a storm of sand Tuesday.

Satellite images released by Planet Labs Inc show to the 59-meter-wide container ship aground diagonally across the canal.

“We’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Ranjith Raja, Middle East oil and shipping researcher at international financial data firm Refinitiv.

“It is likely that the congestion … will take several days or weeks to dissipate, because this will have a ripple effect on the other convoys“.

The blockade has already affected world oil markets. Crude futures rose 6% on Wednesday as traders assessed the possible impact on shipments.

Broker Braemar warned that while the tugs could not move the giant vessel, some of its cargo may need to be lifted by a crane barge to refloat it.

“It can take days or even weeks,” he said.

The directors of the ship, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), based in Singapore, said that its 25 crew members were not injured and the hull and cargo were not damaged.

A MarineTraffic map showed large groups of ships circling as they waited in both the Mediterranean to the north and the Red Sea to the south.

Historic sections of the canal have been reopened in an attempt to reduce the bottleneck, with dozens of boats waiting at both ends of the waterway.

The waterway dramatically shortens travel between Asia and Europe by eliminating the need for ships to navigate around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa.

The road from Singapore to Rotterdam, for example, is 6,000 kilometers and up to two weeks less than touring Africa.

It is an “absolutely critical” route because “all traffic from Asia goes through the Suez Canal,” said Camille Egloff, shipping specialist at the Boston Consulting Group.

Almost 19,000 ships crossed the canal last year with more than a billion tonnes of cargo, according to the SCA.

Egypt made $ 5.61 billion in revenue from the canal in 2020.

ACCIDENT IN 2019

This is not the first time that Never given this is news. In 2019, the ship was involved in another accident, also caused by strong winds, who only by chance found themselves without victims.

The episode occurred in Hamburg, in Germany, on February 9, 2019, as the ship sailed through the Elbe towards Rotterdam.

On this occasion, the Never given slightly out of its way and got too close to a quay where the “Finkenwerder ‘, a small ferry 25 meters long. It was just a slight friction, but enough to inflict severe damage on the ferry, which was completely destroyed.

With information from AFP

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