Cairo – Maritime traffic by The Suez Canal remained blocked Thursday for the third day in a row, with dozens of boats trapped at the north and south entrances of the shortest route between Asia and Africa. One of the largest cargo ships in the world turned sideways and got stuck through the narrow canal on Tuesday, and one of the crews in charge of evacuating the ship has said it could take weeks to move the goods back.
The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of Egypt announced that navigation on the canal was “temporarily suspended” until the Panamanian-flagged container ship MV Ever given could be re-floated.
Suez Canal Authority
On Wednesday, the SCA allowed the entry of 13 ships at the northern end of the canal, from the Mediterranean, in the hope that the Ever Give would dock quickly and the other cargo ships could continue their voyages. But these boats only made it to a lake in the middle of the canal, and they might not go anywhere quickly.
Egypt uses eight large tugs and excavation equipment along the canal, but so far all efforts to refloat the 247,000-ton container vessel nearly a quarter of a mile have failed.
Suez Canal Authority
The SCA said on Thursday that an “alternative scenario” was being adopted, with ships entering the canal on Wednesday from the north “anchoring in the waiting area of the Bitter Lakes, until navigation can be resumed completely”.
Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp., which operates the chartered vessel on behalf of the Japanese company that owns it, has hired Dutch firm Smit Salvage and Japanese firm Nippon Salvage to work with the ship’s captain and the Suez Canal Authority. to find out how to float it again.
Peter Berdowski, CEO of Dutch company Boskalis, which owns Smit Salvage, said Thursday it was still too early to determine how long the work could take.
“We can’t rule out that it may take weeks, depending on the situation,” Berdowski told Dutch television program Nieuwsuur, according to Reuters. Shipping sources told Reuters that if the delays continue, ships could start redirecting to the southern tip of Africa, adding up to thousands of miles and about a week on the voyage.
Suez Canal Authority
The Japanese company that owns Ever Done, Shoei Kisen, told The Associated Press that it was cooperating with local authorities, but “the operation is extremely difficult.”
“We are deeply sorry to have caused enormous concern to ships traveling or planning to travel on the Suez Canal and all related people,” the company said.
Up to 30% of the world’s shipping of shipping containers normally passes through the Suez Canal every day, a journey that takes about six hours, accounting for about 12% of the total goods traded worldwide, according to Reuters.
The news agency quoted industrial consultancy Kpler as saying that while the canal only facilitates transit of about 4.4% of the world’s flow of petroleum products, a prolonged outage could affect supplies to Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, the incident, and in particular the fact that a single ship, though very large, has disrupted world trade and a photo of the hull of the ship sending a lone excavator sent to try to drive it away, has inspired a great deal. of memes on social media. CBS ‘own “salty” Stephen Colbert even put on a captain’s hat to dissect the maritime disaster on his Wednesday night program.
As long as the fun continues online, stress levels will no doubt continue to rise, both for the owners of the boat, who have to pay the bill for the rescue operation, and for the authority of the Egyptian canal, which already suffered a drop in revenue thanks to the COVID pandemic.