Cairo – Maritime traffic through the Suez Canal was blocked on Friday for the fourth day in a row, with dozens of ships blocked at both the northern and southern entrances on the shortest route between Asia and Europe. efforts to deploy one of the largest cargo ships in the world, blocked sideways along the narrow channel on Tuesday, was rising and, while one of the teams in charge of the operation said it could take weeks, an adviser to the Egyptian president offered a more optimistic timetable.
Mohab Mamish, adviser to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on seaports and former chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, told AFP on Thursday that navigation through the canal “will resume again in a maximum of 48-72 hours, maximum”.
Suez Canal Authority
Mamish cited “his experience with several such rescue operations” and said he knew “every inch of the canal.”
SCA announced earlier this week that all canal navigation will be “temporarily suspended” until the MV Ever Date Panamanian-flagged container ship can be re-floated.
The SCA said on Thursday, after meeting with Dutch rescue company SMIT, which helps lead the operation, that approximately 19,600-26,000 cubic meters of sand had to be moved, reaching a depth of 40 to 50 feet along the bank of the canal. , to deploy the ship.
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 at least eight large tugs and excavation equipment along the canal, but so far all efforts to return aboard the container ship of almost a quarter of a mile, 247,000 tons, have failed.
Suez Canal Authority
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.”
Evergreen Marine Corp. of Taiwan, which leases the vessel on behalf of its Japanese company, has hired Dutch firm Smit Salvage and Japanese Nippon Salvage to work with the ship’s captain and Suez Canal authorities to find out how to re-float 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.
CBS News / Satellite Photo Credit: CNES / AIRBUS DS via REUTERS
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 shipping of shipping containers 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 while 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 supply to Asia and Europe and an impact on prices. global oil prices seem inevitable.
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 declining revenue due to the pandemic. COVID. .