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Suez, Egypt: The head of Egypt’s Suez Canal said on Saturday that “technical or human errors” could be behind the grounding of a huge container ship blocking the vital waterway, causing a backlog of more than 300 vessels.
Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, told reporters that the ship could be afloat again Sunday night.
The crisis has paralyzed global supply chains, forcing freight companies to choose between waiting or the expensive option of diverting ships through the southern tip of Africa.
Authorities had previously blamed 40-knot gusts and a sandstorm for the accident.
But Rabie said Saturday that “strong winds and climatic factors” weren’t solely responsible, saying “there may have been technical or human errors.”
When asked when the ship might be released, he gave an optimistic note.
“We could finish today or tomorrow (Sunday), depending on the ship’s responsiveness” to the tides, he said.
More than 320 ships carrying billions of dollars in cargo are now stuck at both ends of the vital transportation route linking Asia to Europe.
The 193-kilometer (120-mile) long canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is vital for shipping between Asia and Europe, the alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope costs an additional 12 days at sea.
Egypt is losing between $ 12 million and $ 14 million in revenue from the canal for every day it is closed, Rabie added.
When will it move?
The MV Ever Given, which has more than four football fields, has been wedged diagonally across the canal since Tuesday, blocking it in both directions.
In a sign of the knock-on effects, Syrian authorities said on Saturday they had been forced to ration already meager supplies of fuel.
The Suez suspension “has affected oil imports to Syria and delayed the arrival of a ship carrying fuel and petroleum products” from the Iranian government ally, the Syrian Oil Ministry said.
And Romania’s animal health agency said on Saturday that 11 ships carrying livestock out of the country were affected by the blockade.
The NGO Animals International warned of a possible “tragedy” that would affect some 130,000 animals.
Those involved in the salvage efforts have given different predictions about how long the canal might take to reopen.
Yukito Higaki, president of the Japanese firm Shoei Kisen, which owns the MV Ever Given, told local media on Friday that the ship could be released on Saturday night.
The chief executive of Royal Boskalis, Smit Salvage’s parent company in charge of the salvage operation, suggested that the ship could be afloat again “early next week.”
Peter Berdowski said Friday that a crane was being installed to remove hundreds of containers from the ship’s foredeck.
But Nick Sloane, a South African salvage captain who was in charge of refloating the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, said that could mean “a very long delay.”
The blockade has caused a large accumulation of ships at the ends of the Red Sea and Mediterranean canal, causing significant delays in the delivery of oil and other products.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), the ship’s technical manager, said efforts focused on “dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the ship’s bow.”
Rabie told reporters on Saturday that 14 tugs had been deployed to help refloat the ship.
Stakes ‘too high’
But the ship with a gross tonnage of 219,000 and a deadweight of 199,000 has not yet moved, forcing global shipping giant Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd to seek a rerouting through Africa.
Lloyd’s List, a shipping data and news company, said Evergreen’s Ever Greet had already done so, adding that the lockdown was holding back an estimated $ 9.6 billion worth of freight per day between Asia and Europe.
Liability for those losses could be difficult to establish, according to Laleh Khalili, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
The “fracture of ownership and operation across different legal jurisdictions and national borders” makes it more difficult to assign liability for maritime accidents, he wrote in The Washington Post on Friday.
Suez traffic has been disrupted several times in the past, especially after Egypt nationalized the operating company in 1956.
That sparked a failed invasion of Britain, France and Israel. Then, during the Six Day War, Egypt imposed a blockade to prevent Israeli ships from using the canal until 1975.
As efforts to free Ever Given increase, rescue teams hope to take advantage of the spring high tide that will begin Sunday night.
Plamen Natzkoff, an expert at VesselsValue, said teams will likely intensify their efforts in the coming days to make the most of that opportunity.
“If they can’t dislodge it during that high tide, the next high tide isn’t there for a couple of weeks, and that becomes problematic,” he said.
“The stakes are high for it to take months.” AFP
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