Egypt closes Suez Canal amid fight to refloat mega-ship ashore

CAIRO, Egypt – The owners of a giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal said Thursday they faced “extreme difficulty” in refloating it as Egypt temporarily closed one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

The seaports adviser to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Mohab Mamish, told AFP late Thursday that “maritime navigation will resume within 48 to 72 hours.”

“I have experience with several such rescue operations and, as a former president of the Suez Canal Authority, I know every inch of the canal,” said Mamish, who oversaw the recent expansion of the waterway.

However, salvage experts warned Thursday that the shutdown could last for days or even weeks, which could force companies to redirect cargo ships through the southern tip of Africa in a blow to global supply networks.

On the third day of the crisis, global shipping giant Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd said they were thinking of taking a tour of Africa.

Suez drastically shortens travel between Asia and Europe. The Singapore-Rotterdam route, for example, is 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) and up to two weeks shorter through the canal than around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said it was doing its best to refloat the MV Ever Given, a 400-meter (1,300-foot) long, 200,000-ton vessel that veered off course and ran aground in a storm. of sand on Tuesday.

Tugs, dredgers and heavy earthmoving equipment have been deployed, but so far the ship has not moved.

“It’s really a heavy whale on the beach, so to speak,” said Peter Berdowski, director of the Dutch firm Smit Salvage, which previously worked on the Italian cruiser Costa Concordia and the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk.

The salvage company was deploying a team to the site Thursday to assess what it would take to dislodge the Panama-flagged ship, said Berdowski, chief executive of its parent company Boskalis.

“I don’t want to speculate, but it may take days or weeks,” he told Dutch television news program Nieuwsuur on Wednesday.

‘Much concern’

Satellite images released by Planet Labs Inc show the so-called “mega ship”, which is longer than four football fields, wedged diagonally across the entire channel.

With ships waiting in both the Mediterranean and Red Sea and in the canal, the SCA announced that it was “temporarily suspending navigation” along the waterway.

Japanese boat rental company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the owner of the giant boat, said it was facing “extreme difficulty” trying to get it afloat.

“We sincerely apologize for causing great concern to the ships in the Suez Canal and those planning to pass through the canal,” he said in a statement.

A MarineTraffic map showed large groups of vessels circling as they waited in both the Mediterranean to the north and the Red Sea to the south.

Oil prices had risen nearly six percent on Wednesday in response to the Suez Canal accident, before falling again on Thursday.

“What a single vessel can do in the global oil market is extraordinary,” said Rystad Energy analyst Bjornar Tonhaugen.

“The ship stuck in the Suez Canal created the visual definition of a supply route bottleneck, effectively disrupting one of the world’s busiest routes for all products.”

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Ranjith Raja, Middle East oil and shipping researcher at financial data firm Refinitiv.

“The congestion … is likely to take several days or weeks to clear up as it will have a ripple effect on other convoys.”

Critical route’

The ship’s managers, Singapore-based Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said the 25 crew on board were unharmed and the hull and cargo were undamaged.

“The ultimate responsibility for the safety of the ship rests with the captain,” said former SCA Mamish president.

Historic sections of the canal were reopened Wednesday in an attempt to ease congestion.

Suez is an “absolutely critical” route, said Camille Egloff, a shipping specialist at Boston Consulting Group.

Nearly 19,000 ships passed through the canal last year with more than 1 billion tons of cargo, according to the SCA.

Egypt had $ 5.61 billion in revenue.

Canal traffic has been disrupted several times in the past, especially during the Arab-Israeli wars of the second half of the 20th century.

It was closed for six months after Egypt nationalized the canal operating company in 1956, prompting a failed invasion by Britain, France and Israel.

Most recently, in 2018, the canal was temporarily closed after a Greek-owned bulk carrier suffered an engine failure, leading to a five-ship collision.

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