DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A skyscraper-sized container ship has been wedged over Egypt’s Suez Canal, blocking all traffic on the vital waterway, officials said Wednesday, threatening to disrupt a global shipping system already under pressure. state of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground on Tuesday in the narrow, man-made channel that separates continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. Images showed the ship’s bow hit the east wall, while the stern appeared to be against the west wall – an extraordinary event experts said they had never heard of in the canal’s 150-year history. .
Tugboats on Wednesday worked to push the obstruction out of the way, while ships hoping to enter the waterway ended up in the Mediterranean and Red Sea. But it remained unclear when the route, through which about 10% of world trade flows and which is especially crucial for the transportation of oil, would reopen. An official warned it could take at least two days. Meanwhile, there were concerns that stationary ships could become the target of attacks.
“The Suez Canal will spare no effort to ensure the recovery of shipping and serve the movement of world trade,” promised Lieutenant General Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, who manages the Ever Given, said all 20 crew members were safe and there were “no reports of injuries or pollution.”
It was not immediately clear why the Ever Given got stuck on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said the ship had blacked out without elaborating further.
Bernhard Schulte, however, denied that the ship had ever lost power.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the vessel, said in a statement that the Ever Given was overwhelmed by high winds as it entered the Red Sea Channel, but none of the containers had sunk.
An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief journalists, similarly blamed a high wind. Egyptian forecasters said high winds and a sandstorm ravaged the area on Tuesday, with gusts of wind up to 50 kph (30 mph).
However, it remained unclear how winds at that speed alone could have propelled a fully laden ship weighing about 220,000 tons.
A pilot from the Egyptian Canal Authority usually boards a ship to guide it through the waterway, although the ship’s captain retains ultimate authority over the ship, said Ranjith Raja, a chief analyst with the data company Refinitiv. The ship sailed the channel for about 45 minutes before it got stuck, at a speed of 12.8 knots (about 24 kph, 15 mph) just before the crash, he said.
An image posted to Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show the Ever Given sandwiched across the channel, as seen in satellite images and data. A backhoe appeared to be digging into the sandbar under his bow in an attempt to free him.
The Egyptian official said tugs hoped to be able to float the ship again and the operation would take at least two days. The ship ran aground about 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) north of the southern mouth of the canal near the city of Suez, part of the canal that is a single lane.
That could have a major knock-on effect on global shipping moving between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant skipper and associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina.
“Every day an average of 50 ships pass through that channel, so closing the channel means that no ships are sailing north and south,” Mercogliano told the AP. “Every day the canal is closed … container ships and tankers do not deliver food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe and goods are not exported from Europe to the Far East.”
According to channel service provider Leth Agencies, some 30 ships were already waiting at Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, halfway up the channel, while about 40 were waiting in the Mediterranean at Port Said and another 30 at Suez in the Red Sea. That included seven ships carrying about 5 million barrels of crude oil, Refinitiv said.
In addition to the economic implications, security experts warned that stationary ships in the Red Sea could be targeted after a series of attacks on Middle East shipping amid tensions between Iran and the US.
“All ships should consider adopting heightened alertness if they are forced to remain still in the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden,” warned private marine intelligence company Dryad Global.
The shutdown could also affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. The price of the international benchmark Brent oil rose nearly 2.9% to $ 62.52 a barrel on Wednesday.
Built in 2018 with a length of nearly 400 meters (a quarter of a mile) and a beam of 59 meters (193 feet), the Ever Given is one of the largest cargo ships in the world. It can transport about 20,000 containers at a time. It had previously been in ports in China before heading to Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal is a vital link for oil, natural gas and freight. It also remains one of the top foreign exchange earners in Egypt. In 2015, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s government completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the largest ships in the world. However, the Ever Given ran aground south of that new section of the canal.
Beaching Tuesday marks just the last to hit sailors during the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands are trapped on board ships as a result of the pandemic. Meanwhile, demands on shipping have increased, adding pressure on tired sailors, Mercogliano said.
“It’s because of the lightning-fast pace of global shipping at the moment and shipping is on a very tight schedule,” he said. “Add to that, mariners have not been able to get on and off ships due to COVID restrictions.”
Associated Press writers Taijing Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, Samy Magdy in Cairo, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.
Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP