The cargo ship is still stranded over the Suez Canal and may not go anywhere for “weeks”

Cairo – Maritime traffic through The Suez Canal remained blocked on Thursday for the third day in a row, with dozens of ships stranded at both the northern and southern entrances on the shortest route between Asia and Africa. One of the largest cargo ships in the world turned sideways and got stuck over the narrow channel on Tuesday, and one of the crews in charge of deploying the ship said it could take weeks for the goods to move again.

The Egyptian Suez Canal (SCA) has announced that navigation through the canal has been “temporarily suspended” until the MV Ever Date Panamanian-flagged container ship can be re-floated.

On Wednesday, the SCA allowed 13 ships to enter the northern end of the canal, from the Mediterranean Sea, in the hope that Ever Date will be blocked quickly and the other cargo ships will be able to continue their voyages. But those ships ended up in a lake in the middle of the canal and might not go anywhere fast.

Egypt uses eight large tugs and excavation equipment along the canal, but so far all efforts to re-float the 247,000-ton-long container vessel nearly a quarter of a mile have failed.

The SCA said on Thursday that an “alternative scenario” was being adopted, with ships entering the northern canal on Wednesday “dropping anchor in the waiting area of ​​the Bitter Lakes, until navigation can be resumed completely.”

Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp, which leases the vessel on behalf of its Japanese company, has hired Dutch company Smit Salvage and Japan’s Nippon Salvage to work with the ship’s captain and the Suez Canal Authority to find out how to refloat it.

Peter Berdowski, CEO of Dutch company Boskalis, which owns Smit Salvage, said on Thursday that it was still too early to determine how long the job could last.

“We can’t rule out that it could take weeks, depending on the situation,” Berdowski told Dutch television station Nieuwsuur, according to Reuters. Shipping sources told Reuters that if the delays continue, ships could begin redirecting around the southern tip of Africa, which adds thousands of miles and about a week to the voyage.

The Japanese company that owns Ever Date, Shoei Kisen, told the Associated Press that it cooperates with local authorities, but “the operation is extremely difficult.”

“We are very sorry that we have caused enormous concern to ships traveling or about to travel in the Suez Canal and all related persons,” the company said.

Up to 30% of the world’s freight container transport usually passes through the Suez Canal every day – a journey that takes about six hours – worth about 12% of total goods traded globally, according to Reuters.

The news agency quoted industrial consultancy Kpler as saying that although the channel only facilitates the transit of about 4.4% of the total global flow of oil products, a prolonged outage could have an impact on supplies to Asia and Europe.

Meanwhile, the incident – and in particular the fact that a single ship, although very large, disrupted global trade and a photograph of the ship’s hull preventing a lone excavator sent to try to dislodge it – inspired a lot of memes on social media. CBS’s own “salt” Stephen Colbert even wore a captain’s hat to dissect the maritime disaster in his Wednesday night show.

As the fun continues online, stress levels will no doubt continue to rise, both for the shipowners, who have to pay the bill for the rescue operation, and for the Egyptian Canal Authority, which was already suffering from a pandemic drop in revenue. COVID. .