More than 100 ships loaded with cargo, including oil, auto parts and consumer goods remain mired in the Suez Canal as tugs and dredgers rushed to free a hit container ship, blocking one of the world’s main trade arteries.
The 220,000-ton, 400-meter-long Ever Given, one of a class of huge new ships labeled “megaships”, was trapped near the south end of the canal on Tuesday morning. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said it has lost its ability to steer amid strong winds and a sandstorm.
GAC, a Dubai-based maritime services company, said the ship was partially refluxed and moved along the bank of the canal on Wednesday afternoon, local time, citing information from the canal authority. “Trains and traffic must be resumed as soon as the vessel is towed to another position,” said the company on its website.
Traffic is accumulated on both sides of the runway, essential for Asia-Europe trade, through which around 50 ships passed per day in 2019, representing almost a third of the worldwide container ship traffic.
About 30 ships were waiting in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, halfway along the canal, while 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. Old sections of the canal have been reopened in an effort to ease congestion.
Analysts predicted traffic disruptions, even if Ever Given was released soon. “When the blockade is released, the ships will rush to make up for lost time and this could be a problem for the ports of arrival,” said Peter Sand, chief navigation analyst at Bimco, an international shipowners’ association.
Ranjith Raja, from financial data firm Refinitiv, said: “We’ve never seen anything like it before, but the resulting congestion is likely to take several days to weeks to resolve. It is expected to have a ripple effect on other trains, schedules and global markets. “
He said 27 of the vessels identified waiting on either side of Ever Given were carrying about 1.9 million metric tons of oil.
Ship broker Braemar told Agence France-Presse that if the tugs are unable to move the ship, some containers may have to be removed by a crane barge to make the ship lighter, and “it could take days, maybe weeks” .
Photos taken from another vessel on the canal, Maersk Denver, showed Ever Given housed at an angle on the other side of the canal. Julianne Cona, who posted a photo on Instagram, watched the drama unfold as her ship waited at anchor. “They had a lot of tugs trying to pull and push earlier, but it wasn’t going anywhere,” she wrote.
The boat ran aground on the channel at around 0540 GMT on Tuesday, having moved at 15 mph. The entire crew was safe and responsible and there were no reports of injuries or pollution, said the ship’s technical manager, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM).
Jamil Sayegh, a former maritime law captain and expert with navigation in the canal, said the accident was probably due in part to the strong winds that turned the containers above the deck into a vast sail that took the ship off course.
“The force generated by the wind would have involuntarily changed the direction of the ship,” said Sayegh, but added that human error may also have been a factor, as ships cross the channel in convoys and none of the ships behind Ever Given have problems similar.
“Ships are machines powered by propulsion engines with almost identical rudders on all vessels. The variables on board are the software and the personnel. “Ships passing through Suez are also required to use Egyptian pilots to help them navigate the stretch, he said.
Weather forecasts would have shown that the winds were strong on Tuesday – Egyptian meteorologists said strong winds and a sandstorm hit the area, with gusts up to 31 mph – but Sayegh said channel officials and sailors tried not to. delay the passage.
“If you delay this ship at Suez anchorage, it means you are making the shipowner lose $ 60,000 [£44,000] a day or $ 3-4,000 an hour late, ”said Sayegh, the Beirut agent for Lloyd’s.
Ever Given, one of a new category of so-called ultra-large container ships (ULCS), some of which are too big for the Panama Canal that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific, carried hundreds of containers bound for Rotterdam from China.
Analysts said the incentive not to interrupt travel was heightened by the emergence of just-in-time supply chains. “For decades, maritime transport has been the invisible conveyor belt at sea, allowing large manufacturing industries, such as the automobile industry, to make just-in-time shipments, although from time to time shippers are complaining in terms of schedule reliability” , said navigation analyst Sand.
Holger Loesch, deputy director general of the Federation of German Industries, said the blockade exacerbated an “already tense situation in international container transport”.
Camille Egloff, a specialist in maritime transport at the Boston Consulting Group, warned of the “domino effects in European ports in the days to come”.
The Suez Canal is one of the most important waterways in the world, connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and shipping routes to Asia. It is 120 miles (190 km) long, 24 meters (79 feet) deep and 205 meters wide and can handle dozens of giant container ships a day. It was expanded in 2015 to allow ships to travel in both directions simultaneously, but only in part of the waterway.
Its role as a cornerstone of international trade, especially in oil, led Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to announce the expansion as “a gift to the world”. It cost $ 8 billion (£ 5.2 billion at the time) after the Egyptian dictator demanded that the project be completed in one year.
Egypt welcomed world leaders in a grand ceremony marking the opening of the channel’s new channel amid a wave of nationalist fervor over the project.
The ships have been stranded in the canal before. In 2017, a Japanese ship got stuck, but it ebbed in a few hours. Away from the canal, a more serious incident occurred near the German port of Hamburg in 2016, when the huge CSCL Indian Ocean ran aground and needed 12 tugs to free it after five days.