A heavy whale on the shore … Why is the Suez Canal ship so difficult to float?



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Books – Ashraf Jihad:

The situation remains unchanged, some 48 hours after the giant Panamanian container ship, NEVER GIVEN, ran aground, forcing the Suez Canal Authority to announce the suspension of navigation on the canal temporarily, indicating the difficulties faced by the flotation of the stranded vessel for km. 151 channel numbering.

Eight locomotives belonging to the Suez Canal Authority – led by the Baraka 1 locomotive with a traction force of 160 tons – in addition to various excavators and equipment participated in the attempts to float the rogue ship since yesterday morning, but failed float up. or saving it to allow the resumption of traffic in navigation.

The crossing attempt was unsuccessful.

The statement from the Suez Canal Authority said today that “the navigation movement in the canal witnessed yesterday an attempt to cross 13 ships from Port Said within the northern convoy. To move according to the alternate scenario, wait in the Great Lakes region until boating traffic fully resumes after floating the ship.

Satellite images and navigation tracking show the continuation of 5 locomotives, including the two, Long Live Egypt, in an attempt to float the stranded ship, for the second day in a row, as the push is made from both sides of the ship and The stabilization water load is reduced to float the ship and resume navigation traffic in the canal.

The stranded ship accident occurred on Tuesday morning, around 7:40 am local time, according to the Japanese company “Choi Kisen Kaisha”, which owns the rogue ship. The Suez Canal Authority attributed the cause of the incident to the lack of horizontal visibility derived from the bad weather conditions due to the passage of the country by a dust storm, since the wind speed reached 40 knots, which caused the loss of the ability to steer the ship and its grounding.

The Gulf Agency Egypt Limited Shipping Company (GAC) issued a memo to its clients last night, saying that efforts to float the ship with tugs are continuing, but wind conditions and the large size of the ship “hamper the operation. . ”

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According to the ship’s GPS, there have only been minor changes in the status of the rogue ship in the last twenty-four hours, and it is still stuck.

The company that operates the container ship, Bernard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), denied previous reports that the tanker had partially floated. In an official statement, the company said that “its urgent priorities are to restart the ship safely and to safely resume the navigation movement in the Suez Canal.”

4 factors control the boat’s float

Martin Schottiver, a spokesman for Boskalis Peter Berdowski, a Dutch company designated by the company that owns the defaulting vessel to participate in its flotation efforts, says the matter will not be easy, and how long the flotation effort may take depends on several factors. , most notably the extent of its submergence and entrenchment at the bottom of both sides of the canal.

Boscalis employs the SMIT Salvage, a legendary unit whose employees parachute from one shipwreck to another, rescuing ships during violent storms. The company has participated in the most daring maritime rescue operations, including the lifting of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine in 2001 and the extraction of fuel from the interior of the Costa Concordia cruise ship after it ran aground in Italy in 2012.

Boskalis’s team arrived in Egypt at 4 am on Thursday and a company spokesperson said: “The 8-person team will check the condition of the ship, get on board and at the same time collect as much information as possible. technique as possible on the weight of the ship, via satellite. “One team flies, the other really calculates,” says Berdowski.

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It could take days, Boscalis CEO Peter Berdowski told Nieuwsuur, a Dutch current affairs TV show, praising the steps taken in Egypt to resurface the ship, describing it as a “valiant attempt.”

He specified the reasons for the difficulty of floating the stranded ship, saying: “This is not the Amsterdam-Rhine canal, where it is the same depth throughout the width. It is a navigation in the middle that is 25 meters deep, but a little later, 15 meters, at 11 meters “. So it’s less than close to both shores, and the ship is 15.7 meters deep.

“You can see from the images that the ship is actually rising,” he added. “It is a very heavy whale lying on the beach, so to speak.”

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He explained: There are 20,000 fully loaded containers on the ship. “This means that there is a huge weight on the sandbar, both in front and behind.”

According to Berdowski, what exactly needs to be done remains to be investigated. “The first thing you do is math. But you came to the conclusion that undo is really not possible. That became clear today.”

According to Berdowski, water and oil can be removed from the boat to lose as much weight as possible. Containers can also be removed from the ship and dredged. Because the ship has to rise from the bottom.

“The more stable the boat is on the bottom, the longer the process will take. It may take days or weeks. Also consider bringing all the equipment we need, as this is not around the corner,” he emphasized.

There are already tugs operating around the ship to help clear it, but with such a gigantic ship, larger ships with higher power are generally required. Rescuers hope that the high tides of the next few days are ripe to help free Ever Given.

Japanese apology

The 200,000-ton vessel, built in 2018 and operated by a Taiwanese shipping company called “Evergreen Marine,” came between the two sides of the creek on Tuesday around 7:40 am local time (05:40 GMT).

The tanker, which is about four football fields long and 59 meters wide, blocked the routes of other ships that got stuck in queues in either direction.

On Thursday, the Japanese company that owns the ship apologized for the accident, which sparked widespread global interest in the importance of the global waterway, and stressed that the situation is “very difficult.”

And it said in a statement on its official website, that it is currently working to solve the problem, in cooperation with local authorities and the company “Bernard Schulte Ship Management”, to make the ship float again.

The Japanese company confirmed that the ship’s crime did not cause injuries to the crew or an oil leak. And the crew of the rogue ship “Ever Geffen” includes 25 workers from India, according to the German news agency.

The company added: “We deeply apologize for causing concern to ships traveling or planning to travel on the Suez Canal, and all individuals associated with it.”

Navigation overflow

For its part, “Leith Agencies”, the service provider on the canal, said that at least 150 ships are waiting to clear the rogue ship, including ships near Port Said on the Mediterranean and the port of Suez on the Red Sea. , and those already stuck in the course of the canal in the lakes El tiempo.

He said the overcrowding of ships affected ships that were supposed to travel to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Dozens of ships are gathered at both ends of the canal, including other large containers, tankers and tankers, and grain ships.

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According to Lloyd’s List, a website dedicated to analyzing shipping data, the

The financial implications of the blockade of the expanded Suez Canal are significant. According to data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence Tracking, some 165 ships representing 13 million DWT are currently waiting at the end of the canal or blocked from outside.

This total includes:

41 bulk carriers transporting 2.9 million tons.

24 tankers.

33 container containers.

16 liquefied gas tanks.

15 oil product tankers, including three long-haul vessels. These shipments are likely to carry 90,000 tonnes of jet fuel or diesel to Europe or the Mediterranean.

Eight carriers

About 30 percent of the world’s shipping containers pass through the 193 km-long Suez Canal daily, and about 12 percent of total global trade in all goods.

Last year, nearly 19,000 ships crossed the canal, according to the Suez Canal Authority, an average of 51.5 ships per day.

The length of the Suez Canal is about 193 kilometers and includes three natural lakes along the canal. In 2017, a Japanese container ship blocked the canal after it ran aground following a mechanical failure. Egyptian authorities used locomotives to float them in a matter of hours.

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