Cairo – Sea traffic across the Suez Canal remained blocked on Friday for the fourth consecutive day, with dozens of ships trapped at the north and south entrances for the shortest route between Asia and Europe. Efforts to displace one of the largest cargo ships in the world, stuck sideways along the narrow channel since Tuesday, was improving, and while one of the teams responsible for 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 president of the Suez Canal Authority, told AFP news agency on Thursday that navigation on the canal “will resume again within 48-72 hours at most “.
Suez Canal Authority
Mamish cited his “experience with various rescue operations of this type” and said he knew “every inch of the channel”.
SCA announced earlier this week that all navigation across the channel would be “temporarily suspended” until the massive container ship MV Ever Given could be floated again.
SCA said on Thursday after meeting with Dutch rescue company SMIT, which is helping to lead the operation, that some 19,600-26,000 cubic yards of sand had to be moved, reaching a depth of 40 to 50 feet along from the edge of the channel, to dislodge the send.
On Wednesday, SCA allowed 13 ships to enter the northern end of the channel from the Mediterranean, hoping that Ever Given would be released quickly and the other cargo ships could continue their voyages. But these ships only reached a lake in the middle of the channel and may not be going anywhere quickly.
Egypt is using at least eight large tugboats and excavation equipment on the banks of the canal, but so far all efforts to re-reflect the nearly quarter-mile 247,000-ton container ship have failed.
Suez Canal Authority
SCA said Thursday that an “alternative scenario” was being adopted, with vessels entering the channel from the north on Wednesday “anchoring in the Bitter Lakes waiting area, until navigation can be resumed fully.”
Evergreen Marine Corp of Taiwan, which operates the ship on a lease on behalf of the Japanese company that owns it, hired Dutch company Smit Salvage and Japanese company Nippon Salvage to work with the ship’s captain and the Suez Canal Authority to find out how to-float.
Peter Berdowski, CEO of Dutch company Boskalis that owns Smit Salvage, said on Thursday that it was too early to determine how long the job could take.
“We cannot exclude that it can take weeks, depending on the situation,” Berdowski told Dutch television program “Nieuwsuur”, according to Reuters. Navigation sources told Reuters that if delays continue, ships may begin to redirect 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 Given, Shoei Kisen, told the Associated Press that it was cooperating with local authorities, but “the operation is extremely difficult”.
“We are very sorry to cause tremendous concern to ships that are traveling or scheduled to travel on the Suez Canal, and all related people,” said the company.
Up to 30% of worldwide container freight typically passes through the Suez Canal every day – a journey that takes about six hours – making up about 12% of the total goods traded globally, according to Reuters.
The news agency quoted industry consultancy Kpler as saying that while the channel only facilitates the transit of around 4.4% of the world’s total oil product flow, a prolonged outage could impact supplies from Asia and Europe, and an impact on global oil prices seemed inevitable.
Meanwhile, the incident – and in particular the fact that a single ship, although very large, disrupted global trade and a photo of the ship’s hull making a small excavator sent to try to dislodge it – inspired a lot of memes in the social media . CBS ‘own “salty” Stephen Colbert even put on a captain’s hat to dissect the maritime disaster at his show on Wednesday night.
As the fun continues online, stress levels will undoubtedly continue to rise both for the ship’s owners, who have to pay the bill for the rescue operation, and for the Egyptian channel authority, which was already suffering from a drop in revenue due to to the COVID pandemic.