New refloating offer by the owner of the ship blocking the Suez Canal

The owner of a mega-ship blocking Egypt’s Suez Canal hopes to refloat it as soon as today, as the crisis forced companies to redirect services from the vital transportation route around Africa.

The MV Ever Given, which has more than four football fields, has been wedged diagonally along the canal since Tuesday, blocking the waterway in both directions.

At a press conference in Japan yesterday, the chairman of Shoei Kisen, the ship’s owner, told local media that there were no signs of damage to its engines and various instruments.

“The ship is not taking in water. There is no problem with its rudders and propellers. Once it floats again, it should be able to operate,” said Yukito Higaki in the western city of Imabari, according to the Asahi Shimbun news agency.

The company aims to release the ship “on Saturday night Japan time,” it added, the Nikkei said. Japan is nine hours ahead of Irish time.

“We continue to work to remove the sediment from now on, with additional dredging tools,” Higaki said, according to the agency.

Workers have started using machinery that can remove pulverized rocks in an attempt to free the ship when the canal will be at high tide.

The blockade has caused a huge traffic jam of more than 200 ships at both ends of the 193-kilometer-long canal and significant delays in the delivery of oil and other products.

Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), the ship’s technical manager, said yesterday that an attempt to refloat the ship had failed.

“The focus is now on dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the ship’s bow,” the firm said.

Smit Salvage, a Dutch firm that has worked on some of the most famous shipwrecks in recent years, confirmed that “two additional tugs” would arrive on Sunday to help, he added.

There have been “no reports of contamination or damage to the load and initial investigations rule out any mechanical or motor failure as the cause of the grounding.”

Crews had been seen working at night, using a large dredging machine under floodlights.

But the ship, with a gross tonnage of 219,000 and a deadweight of 199,000 tonnes, has yet to move, forcing global shipping giant Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd to seek a rerouting around the southern tip of Africa.

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority said the mega ship veered off course and ran aground when winds reaching 40 knots triggered a sandstorm that affected visibility.