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ISMAILIA, Egypt (REUTERS) – Shipping was on the move again late Monday (March 29) in Egypt’s Suez Canal after tugs refloated a giant container ship that had been blocking the canal for almost a week, which caused a large accumulation of vessels. around the waterway.
After the 400-meter-long Ever Given was evicted, 113 ships were expected to transit the canal in both directions early Tuesday morning, the president of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) told reporters. ), Osama Rabie.
He said an accumulation of 422 ships could be cleared in three and a half days.
The Ever Given had stalled diagonally across a southern section of the canal in high winds early on March 23, stopping traffic on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.
Evergreen Line, which rents the Ever Given, said the ship would be inspected for navigability in the Great Bitter Lake, which separates two sections of the canal.
“The ship was ready for limited navigation after an initial inspection and not a single container was damaged, but a second investigation will be more accurate and if it was affected it will show,” Rabie said.
At dawn on Monday, SCA rescuers working with a team from the Dutch firm Smit Salvage partially refloated the ship and righted it in the canal.
After several hours, it briefly drifted back through the canal before being released by tugs as the tide turned, a canal source said.
“The time pressure to complete this operation was evident and unprecedented,” said Peter Berdowski, CEO of Smit Salvage owner Boskalis, after the Ever Given was re-floated.
The company said that approximately 30,000 cubic meters of sand were dredged to refloat the 224,000-ton container ship and that a total of 11 tugs and two powerful tugs were used to launch the ship.
Evergreen Line, which rents the Ever Given, confirmed that the ship had been successfully refloated and said it would be repositioned in a lake between two sections of the canal and that it will be inspected for navigability.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), the technical managers of the container ship, said there were no reports of contamination or damage to the cargo.
Tail
Ships expected to transit the canal include dozens of container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels, Nile TV reported.
Rabie said that within four days, traffic would return to normal. “We will work day and night to end the delay.”
Ships similar in size to Ever Given, which is one of the largest container ships in the world, could safely cross the canal, he added, and the SCA would not change its policy on admitting such ships.
Shipping group Maersk said global shipping disruptions could take weeks or months to resolve.
Delayed ship owners and charterers face at least $ 24 million in expenses they won’t be able to recoup because their insurance policies don’t cover them and cargo owners could also face uninsured losses, industry sources said.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who had not publicly commented on the blockade, said Egypt had ended the crisis and ensured the resumption of trade through the canal.
Oil prices fell 1 percent after the ship was floated while shares of Evergreen Marine Corp, which is listed in Taiwan, rose.
About 15 percent of the world’s maritime traffic transits the Suez Canal, which is a major source of foreign exchange earnings for Egypt. The strike was costing the channel between $ 14 million and $ 15 million a day.
Shipping rates for oil product tankers nearly doubled after the ship was stranded, and the lockdown has disrupted global supply chains, threatening costly delays for companies already facing shipping restrictions. Covid-19.
Maersk was one of the carriers that redirected cargo around the Cape of Good Hope, adding up to two weeks to travel and additional fuel costs.
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