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Two additional tugs headed into Egypt’s Suez Canal on Sunday to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship trapped for days in the crucial waterway.
Increased efforts come as major carriers increasingly divert their ships out of fear that the ship may remain stuck longer than expected.
Uncredited / AP
This satellite image from Maxar Technologies shows the MV Ever Given freighter trapped in the Suez Canal near Suez, Egypt.
The massive Ever Given, a Japanese-owned Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck Tuesday on a single-lane stretch of the canal.
In the time since, authorities have been unable to remove the ship and traffic through the canal, valued at more than $ 9 billion a day (NZ $ 12.8 billion), has come to a halt, further disrupting a network. transport company already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called in to help the tugs already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday (Sunday night NZT), satellite data from MarineTraffic.com.
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Tugs will push the 400-meter-long Ever Given, while dredgers continue to suck up sand from under the ship and caked mud on the port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages Ever Given.
Workers planned to make two attempts on Sunday to free the vessel to coincide with high tides, a senior pilot with the canal authority said.
“Sunday is very critical,” said the pilot. “It will determine the next step, which most likely involves at least partial unloading of the vessel.”
Mohamed Elshahed / AP
Authorities are preparing to make further attempts to free the giant container ship trapped in Egypt’s Suez Canal for the fifth day and reopen a crucial east-west waterway for global shipping.
Removing the containers from the ship would likely add more days to the canal’s closure, something authorities have been desperately trying to avoid. It would also require a crane and other equipment that has not yet arrived.
The pilot spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to inform reporters.
On Saturday, the head of the Suez Canal Authority told reporters that strong winds “were not the only cause” of the Ever Given grounding, which appeared to reject conflicting assessments offered by others.
Lieutenant General Osama Rabei said an investigation was underway but did not rule out human or technical error.
Uncredited / AP
Two more tugs are competing to help try to free the giant container ship, which is holding back world trade.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement maintains that their “initial investigations rule out any mechanical or motor failure as the cause of the grounding.” However, at least one initial report suggested that a “blackout” struck the huge ship carrying some 20,000 containers at the time of the incident.
Rabei said he was hopeful that dredging could free the ship without resorting to removing its cargo, but added that “we are in a difficult situation, it is a bad incident.
Asked when they expected to release the ship and reopen the canal, he said: “I can’t say because I don’t know.”
Speaking to pro-government Egyptian television channel Extra News on Sunday, Rabei said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi had directed the channel’s authority to prepare for all options, including removing containers from the ship.
He said officials had been in talks with the United States about that possibility. He did not elaborate.
AP
This satellite image from Maxar Technologies shows freighters waiting while the MV Ever Given is trapped in the Suez Canal.
Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the company that owns the ship, said it was considering removing the containers if other refloating efforts failed.
The Ever Given is located about 6 kilometers north of the canal entrance to the Red Sea, near the city of Suez.
A prolonged closure of the crucial waterway would cause delays in the global shipping chain.
About 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures. About 10 percent of world trade flows through the canal.
The shutdown could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Syria has already begun rationing fuel distribution in the war-torn country amid concerns about delays in shipments arriving amid the blockade.
Mohamed Elshahed / AP
Tugboats and a specialized suction dredger are working to dislodge a giant container ship that has been stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for the past three days, blocking a crucial waterway for global shipping.
As of early Sunday morning (Sunday night NZT), more than 320 ships were waiting to travel through the Suez, either to the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, according to canal services firm Leth Agencies. Dozens of others still indicated their destination as the canal, though porters appear to be increasingly avoiding the pass.
The world’s largest shipping company, Danish AP Moller-Maersk, warned its customers that it would take three to six days to clear the backlog of vessels in the canal. The firm and its partners already have 22 ships waiting there.
“The current number (of) redirected Maersk and partner vessels is 14 and is expected to increase as we assess salvage efforts alongside the network capacity and fuel on our vessels currently en route to Suez,” the sender said.
AP
The Ever Given freighter sits with its bow nailed to the wall, after it got stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal and blocked all traffic on the vital waterway.
Mediterranean Shipping Co, the world’s second-largest, said it had already diverted at least 11 ships around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to avoid the canal. He pushed back two other boats and said he expected “some lost trips as a result of this incident.”
“MSC expects this incident to have a very significant impact on the movement of containerized goods, disrupting supply chains beyond the existing challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre and Malak Harb in Dubai contributed to this report.
