The gigantic merchant ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal and hinders part of world trade

A giant container ship has run aground in the Suez Canal due to a gust of wind, the shipping company that operates it said on Wednesday.and maritime traffic stopped on one of the busiest trade routes in the world.

Traffic on the narrow waterway that separates mainland Africa from the Sinai Peninsula came to a halt on Tuesday after the MV Ever Given, a Panamanian-flagged container ship whose owner is registered in Japan, was blocked.

“The container ship accidentally ran aground, possibly after being hit by a gust of wind», He told the AFP Evergreen Marine Corp.

The company is in contact “with the interested parties, including the Authority which administers the channel, to help the ship as quickly as possible, ”he said.

According to the Bloomberg agency, after the incident, more than 100 ships are waiting to cross the Suez Canal.

“There was a grounding incident,” Alok Roy, director of BSM Hong Kong, which manages “Ever Given”, told Bloomberg.

This fact temporarily puts part of world trade in difficulty, as it is one of the main trade routes that connects Europe to Asia., and that it prevents ships from encircling the African continent.

The channel is 190 kilometers long, 24 meters deep and 205 meters wide. Staff working at the site have already made several unsuccessful attempts to get the merchant ship back on track.

The ship, 400 meters long, 59 meters wide and capable of carrying up to 20,000 containers, was destined for Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

It was not immediately clear what had prompted Ever Given to turn sideways on the canal. GAC, a global transportation and logistics company, said Ever Given suffered “a power outage while traveling north,” without giving further details.

The bow of Ever Given touched the canal wall, while its stern appeared to be lodged against the western wall, according to satellite data from MarineTraffic.com. Several tugs circled the vessel, probably trying to push it the right way.

An image posted to Instagram by a user on another freighter shows how Ever Given is blocked. The ship appeared to be stranded about 6 kilometers north of the southern mouth near the town of Suez.

“The ship in front of us ran aground crossing the canal and is now stranded. It looks like we’re going to be here for a while… ”Julianne Cona, the New York engineer who took the photo, wrote on her Instagram account.

Freighters and tankers appeared to be lined up at the southern end of the Suez Canal, waiting to be able to pass through the waterway to the Mediterranean Sea, according to data from MarineTraffic.

Consulted by the Financial Times (FT), Samir Madani, of TankerTrackers, said about 10 million barrels of crude receded near the northern and southern entrances to the canals..

“The canal is a major bottleneck for global trade,” Madani said FT. “If they can free the ship quickly, the impact will be minimized, But any prolonged lockdown would have serious consequences, affecting oil prices and shipping costs to force container ships to take the much longer route around Africa, ”he added.

A United Nations database has revealed that the Ever Gren is owned by Shoei Kisen KK, a boat rental company based in Imabari, Japan.

Almost 19,000 ships, an average of 51.5 ships per day, with a net tonnage of 1.17 billion tonnes, passed through the canal in 2020, according to the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal is a crucial link for the transport of oil, natural gas and goods from east to west.. About 10% of world trade passes through the waterway and it remains one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign exchange. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the largest ships in the world.

On the other hand, the manager of the Suez Canal declared revenue of $ 5.61 billion in 2020, despite the coronavirus pandemic which has affected maritime trade, reported this Sunday the authority which manages it.

The head of the Suez Canal Authority, Admiral Osama Rabie, said in a statement that 2020 “is the third highest annual income in the history of the canal and reflects a flexibility and management professionalism that ‘had never been seen before. In previous crises, “as in 2016.

With information from Reuters, AFP and AP

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