A dredger attempts to free a stranded container ship Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, after it ran aground in the Suez Canal, Egypt, on March 26, 2021.
Suez Canal Authority | Reuters
According to data from MarineTraffic and ClipperData, companies are trying to reroute their shipping vessels to avoid the Suez Canal logging disruption, including at least two US vessels carrying natural gas for Cheniere and Shell / BG Group.
At least ten tankers and container ships are changing course as the Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, remains stranded across the canal along Egypt, MarineTraffic spokesman Georgios Hatzimanolis told CNBC in an interview.
“We expect that number to increase as this closure progresses,” said Hatzimanolis.
The 1,300-foot ship ran aground on Tuesday from Malaysia to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The stranded ship has caused other ships to get back into the channel, holding about $ 400 million an hour in goods, according to Lloyd’s List Ship Journal. That has slowly increased in recent days after repeated attempts by Egypt to refloat the 247,000-ton container ship have failed. Officials there deployed eight large tugs and excavators on the banks of the canal to excavate sand around the aground ship.
According to MarineTraffic, 97 ships are trapped in the upper part of the canal, 23 ships waiting in the middle and 108 ships in the lower part. The logjam stretches through the Red Sea, along the Gulf of Aden, all the way to the border of Yemen and Oman.
“From Asia to Europe, we see ships diverting in the Indian Ocean, just below the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka,” Hatzimanolis added. For Europe-facing ships coming from Asia, a ship journey through Africa instead of the canal could take up to seven days, he said.
The Maran Gas Andros LNG tanker took off from Ingleside, Texas on March 19, loaded with Cheniere fuel and a cargo capacity of 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. The Pan Americas LNG tanker, carrying Shell / BG fuel, left the Sabine Pass on March 17 and can carry up to 174,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. Matt Smith, director of commodity research for ClipperData, confirmed which companies were using the ships.
Both tankers changed course in the middle of the North Atlantic before turning around to circumnavigate the Cape.
ClipperData also shows the Suezmax Marlin Santorini loaded with 700,000 barrels of Midland West Texas Intermediate crude oil diverting from the canal. Smith said the original route to the Suez was an “unusual diversion.”
“The vast majority of US crude oil exports avoid the Suez Canal and go to Europe or around the Cape of Good Hope to Asia,” explains Smith. The Suezmax Marlin was located at Magellan’s Seabrook terminal in Houston, Texas on March 10, where it was replenished with 330,000 barrels of light crude oil from West Texas before heading to Galveston, Texas the next day.
The ship then left the US to signal to Port Said in northeast Egypt, but turned south on Thursday after passing the Azores Islands near Portugal. “The ship has yet to update its declared destination,” said Smith.
ClipperData shows the number of fully loaded fuel tankers waiting for both Port Said and the US Gulf Coast. As of Friday afternoon, two more tankers and a Suezmax, the largest tanker capable of navigating the Suez Canal, carried vacuum gas oil from the US, passed Crete and anchored off the coast of Egypt.
Another ship, the HMM Rotterdam container ship, turned away from the canal just before entering the Strait of Gibraltar and changed course to sail around Africa.
Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO, said the diversion pattern is similar to other ships.
“We see not only container ships diverting in both directions, but also LNG carriers and dry bulk carriers from the US Gulf of Mexico,” said Sand. “The ships make a sharp right turn in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to sail south to the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the logjam around Suez.”
Kevin Book, CEO of ClearView Energy Partners, says that while a long Suez interruption introduces latency into the supply system, for liquefied natural gas, the length of the delay depends on where the ship started, where it is going and where it is during the voyage has changed course.
“For US Gulf exporters, going around the horn means just three days or less at sea to the port of Tokyo,” Book said. “For cargoes from Doha to northwestern Europe, that route could change the journey for ten days.”
Freight that originated in the Gulf of Mexico and becomes trapped in the Mediterranean can undergo a ten-day diversion instead of three, he said.
At the time of publication, Cheniere and Shell / BG have responded to CNBC’s request for comment.
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company said 11 of its ships were diverted, 19 were anchored on either side of the canal and two ships were being sent back from Friday afternoon.
The blockage of the Suez Canal is one of the “biggest disruptions to world trade in recent years,” MSC Senior Vice President Caroline Becquart said in an email on Saturday.
“We expect the second quarter of 2021 to be more disrupted than the first three months, and perhaps even more challenging than at the end of last year,” she said. “Businesses can expect the Suez block to lead to a limitation of transmission capacity and equipment, and consequently some worsening of supply chain reliability problems in the coming months.”