DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A skyscraper-sized container ship has crashed into Egypt’s Suez Canal and blocked all vital waterway traffic, officials said on Wednesday, threatening to disrupt a global transportation system. already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ever Give, a Panama-flagged ship carrying cargo between Asia and Europe, gave birth on Tuesday in the man-made narrow channel that divides mainland Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. The images showed the ship’s bow touching the east wall, while its stern appeared on the west wall – an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of before in the 150-year history of the canal.
The tugs tightened on Wednesday to try to push the obstruction out of the way, while ships hoping to enter the waterway began lining up in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But it remains unclear when the route will reopen, through which about 10% of world trade flows and which is particularly important for oil transport. An official warned that it could take at least two days. Meanwhile, there were concerns that slow-moving ships could become targets for attacks.
“The Suez Canal will spare no effort to ensure the restoration of navigation and to serve the global trade movement,” promised Lt. General Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, who manages Ever Date, said all 20 crew members were safe and that there were no “reports of injuries or pollution”.
It was not clear immediately as soon as Ever Date became embedded on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said the ship suffered an uninterrupted outage.
However, Bernhard Schulte denied that the ship had ever lost power.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwanese shipping company operating the ship, said in a statement that Ever Date was overwhelmed by strong winds as it entered the Red Sea canal, but none of its containers sank. .
An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to inform reporters, similarly blamed. Egyptian meteorologists said strong winds and a sandstorm affected the area on Tuesday, with winds blowing up to 50 km / h (30 mph).
However, it remained unclear how the winds at that speed could have pushed a fully loaded ship, weighing about 220,000 tons.
A pilot from the Egyptian Canal Authority usually climbs into a ship to guide it on waterways, although the ship’s captain retains supreme authority over the ship, said Ranjith Raja, chief analyst at data firm Refinitiv. The ship entered the canal about 45 minutes before it stalled, moving at 12.8 knots (about 24 km / h), just before the crash, he said.
An image posted on Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show Ever Date embedded across the channel, as shown in satellite images and data. A backhoe seemed to be digging in the sandy shore beneath its arch in an attempt to free it.
The Egyptian official said that the tugs hope to re-float the ship and that the operation will last at least two days. The ship was stranded about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern mouth of the canal, near the city of Suez, an area of the canal that is a single lane.
This could have a major effect on global shipping between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former commercial sailor and associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina.
“Every day, an average of 50 ships pass through that canal, so closing the canal means there are no ships transiting north and south,” Mercogliano told AP. “Every day, the canal is closed … container vessels and tanks do not deliver food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe, and the goods are not exported from Europe to the Far East.”
Already, about 30 ships have been waiting at Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the canal, while about 40 have sunk in the Mediterranean Sea near Port Said and another 30 at Suez in the Red Sea, according to canal service provider Leth Agencies . It included seven ships carrying about 5 million barrels of crude oil, Refinitiv said.
In addition to the economic implications, security experts have warned that slow-moving ships in the Red Sea could be targeted after a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East amid tensions between Iran and the United States.
“All ships should consider adopting an increased vigilance position if they are forced to remain static in the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden,” warned private marine intelligence firm Dryad Global.
The closure could also affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Brent’s international benchmark oil price rose nearly 2.9 percent to $ 62.52 a barrel on Wednesday.
Ever Date, built in 2018, with a length of almost 400 meters and a width of 59 meters, is one of the largest cargo ships in the world. It can carry about 20,000 containers at a time. He had previously been in Chinese ports before heading to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and goods. It also remains one of the biggest currency winners in Egypt. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major extension of the canal, allowing it to house the largest ships in the world. However, Ever Date collapsed south of that new portion of the canal.
Tuesday, which is no longer on the market, marks the latest thing that has affected sailors amid the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands have been stranded aboard ships due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, shipping demands have increased, increasing pressure on tired sailors, Mercogliano said.
“This is due to the dizzying pace of world transport at the moment, and the transport is in a very tight schedule,” he said. “Add to that that the sailors failed to get on and off the ships due to COVID restrictions.”
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Associated Press writers Taijing Wu of Taipei, Taiwan, Samy Magdy of Cairo, Mari Yamaguchi of Tokyo and Isabel DeBre of Dubai contributed to the report.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.