[ad_1]
SUEZ, Egypt: Two additional tugs sped toward Egypt’s Suez Canal on Sunday (March 28) to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship trapped for days in the crucial waterway, even as major shippers increasingly divert their ships out of fear of the ship. it may take even longer to release.
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.
Since then, authorities have been unable to remove the ship and traffic through the canal, valued at more than $ 9 billion a day, has come to a halt, further disrupting a global transportation network already strained by the COVID-pandemic. 19.
The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called to help the tugs already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday morning, MarineTraffic satellite data showed. .com.
The tugs will push the 400-meter-long Ever Given while the dredgers continue to suck sand from under the ship and caked mud on her port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, who manages Ever Given.
READ: Strong wind is not the main reason for the Suez ship stranding: canal boss
Ever Given, a Panama-flagged freighter that is trapped in the Suez Canal and blocking traffic on the vital waterway is seen on March 27, 2021 (Photo: AP / Mohamed Elshahed).
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.
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 around 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.”
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 km north of the canal entrance to the Red Sea, near the city of Suez.
Ever Given, a Panama-flagged freighter that is trapped in the Suez Canal and blocking traffic on the vital waterway is seen on March 27, 2021 (Photo: AP / Mohamed Elshahed).
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.
As of Saturday, more than 270 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.
Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), 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.
