DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A skyscraper-sized container ship was trapped in Egypt’s Suez Canal and blocked all traffic on the vital waterway, officials said on Wednesday, threatening to disrupt a water system. global transport already affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
MV Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship carrying cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground on Tuesday on the narrow artificial canal that divides mainland Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. Images showed that the bow of the ship was touching the east wall, while its stern appeared to be lodged against the west wall – an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of in the channel’s 150-year history.
The tugboats struggled on Wednesday to try to clear the obstruction out of the way as ships hoping to enter the waterway began to line up in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. But it was not clear when the route, which accounts for about 10% of world trade and which is particularly crucial for the transport of oil, would be reopened. An official warned that it could take at least two days. In the meantime, there was a concern that idle ships could become targets for attacks.
“The Suez Canal will spare no effort to ensure the restoration of navigation and serve the global trade movement,” promised Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, who manages Ever Given, said that all 20 crew members were safe and that “there were no reports of injuries or pollution”.
It was not immediately clear what caused Ever Given to be arrested on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global transportation and logistics company, said the ship went through a blackout without giving further details.
Bernhard Schulte, however, denied that the ship had lost power.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a large Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the ship, said in a statement that Ever Given was beaten by strong winds when entering the channel from the Red Sea, 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 journalists, also blamed a strong wind. Egyptian meteorologists said strong winds and a sandstorm hit the area on Tuesday, with gusting winds of up to 50 km / h.
However, it was not clear how the winds of that speed alone would be able to push a fully loaded ship weighing around 220,000 tons.
A pilot for Egypt’s channel authority usually boards a ship to guide him through the waterway, although the ship’s captain retains final authority over the ship, said Ranjith Raja, chief analyst at data company Refinitiv. The ship entered the channel about 45 minutes before being trapped, moving at 12.8 knots (about 24 km / h) just before the accident, he said.
An image posted on Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show Ever Given stuck in the channel, as shown in satellite images and data. A backhoe appeared to be digging into the sandbar under its bow in an effort to free it.
The Egyptian official said the tugs expected to redo the ship and that the operation would take at least two days. The ship ran aground about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the mouth of the canal to the south, near the city of Suez, an area of the canal that has a single strip.
This could have a major knock-on effect for global navigation that moves between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant sailor and associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina.
“Every day, an average of 50 vessels pass through that channel, so closing the channel means that no vessel is transiting north and south,” Mercogliano told AP. “Every day the canal is closed … container ships and oil tankers are not delivering food, fuel and manufactured products to Europe and products are not being exported from Europe to the Far East.”
About 30 ships were already waiting in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, in the middle of the channel, while about 40 were stranded in the Mediterranean near Port Said and another 30 in Suez on the Red Sea, according to channel service provider Leth Agencies . That included seven ships carrying about 5 million barrels of crude oil, Refinitiv said.
In addition to the economic implications, security experts have warned that idle ships in the Red Sea may be targets after a series of attacks on ships in the Middle East amid tensions between Iran and the United States.
“All ships should consider adopting a high alert posture if forced to remain static in the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden,” warned private marine intelligence company Dryad Global.
The closure could also affect oil and gas shipments from the Middle East to Europe. The price of Brent’s international benchmark oil jumped nearly 2.9% to $ 62.52 a barrel on Wednesday.
Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of almost 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is among the largest cargo ships in the world. It can transport around 20,000 containers at a time. He had already been to ports in China before heading to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. It also remains one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the largest ships in the world. However, Ever Given ran aground south of this new part of the channel.
Stranded Tuesday is just the last to affect sailors in the midst of the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands were arrested on board ships due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, demand for ships has increased, increasing pressure on tired sailors, Mercogliano said.
“It is because of the breakneck pace of global shipping now and the shipment is on a very tight schedule,” he said. “Add to that that sailors have been unable to get on and off ships because of COVID restrictions.”
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Associated Press editors Taijing Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, Samy Magdy in Cairo, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.