An excavator 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 25, 2021.
Suez Canal Authority | Reuters
The massive container ship Ever Given has been moored in the Suez Canal for three days, putting billions of dollars into trade as ships pile up at both ends of the waterway.
Research firm StoneX estimates that more than 150 ships are waiting to pass through the 120-mile canal.
Images taken with the marine tracker MarineTraffic show the size of the deposit.
A graph from MarineTraffic showing that shipping traffic around the Suez Canal came to a halt after the ship Ever Given got stuck in the canal.
Source: MarineTraffic
A graph from MarineTraffic showing that shipping traffic around the Suez Canal came to a halt after the ship Ever Given got stuck in the canal.
Source: MarineTraffic
The canal handles about 12% of maritime traffic, making it an essential transit point. Each day of blocking disrupts more than $ 9 billion worth of goods, according to The Associated Press, based on Lloyd’s List estimates.
Research firm StoneX noted that 24 of the ships carry crude oil, 15 refined product tankers and 16 liquefied natural gas / liquefied petroleum gas tankers.
For ships waiting to pass through the channel, alternative options are limited.
“As the delays continue, shippers will have to make the unpleasant decision of making a U-turn and heading towards the Cape of Good Hope or waiting in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean,” commodity data company Kpler said. a note to customers.
A different route will make the journey considerably longer, which translates into higher costs. Sailing the Suez Canal to Amsterdam takes just over 13 days on a 12 knot voyage, compared to 41 days on a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa.
Stranded container ship Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, is seen after it ran aground, in the Suez Canal, Egypt, on March 25, 2021.
Suez Canal Authority | Reuters
“The event highlights the relative vulnerability of the trading system to water, especially for those flows for which Suez Canal transit represents a higher percentage of total volumes moved,” the company added.
The ship was clamped horizontally in the waterway by heavy winds. Several tugs have been dispatched to the scene and a team from Smit Salvage has been brought in to assist.
“The dredging work to get the ship running smoothly continues. In addition to the dredgers that are already on site, a specialized dredger has also arrived on site,” says Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, the ship’s technical manager. The firm said an early attempt to refloat the ship on Thursday failed, and another attempt would be made later in the day.
The huge cargo carrier is over 400 meters long and about 30 meters wide. It weighs more than 200,000 tons. One end of the ship was wedged into one side of the canal and the other end almost ran to the other bank.
Nearly 19,000 ships passed through the canal by 2020, according to the Suez Canal Authority, for an average of 51.5 a day. The ship was sailing from China to Rotterdam when it ran aground.
Lieutenant General Ossama Rabei, center, head of the Suez Canal Authority, with a team walk along the bank of the Suez Canal where the Ever Given, a Panamanian-flagged cargo ship, becomes trapped over the Suez Canal, blocking traffic in the vital waterway. An operation is underway to attempt to free the ship, further endangering global shipping on Thursday as at least 150 other ships required to pass through the crucial waterway waited for the obstruction to clear.
Suez Canal Authority | AP
Oil prices are up about 6% on Wednesday, with both West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures and Brent crude oil futures posting their best days since November. But on Thursday, contracts were back in the red, with demand concerns weighing in amid lockdowns in Europe.
The channel blockade is exacerbating supply chains already under pressure from the disruptions caused by Covid-19.
“While it remains premature to assess the full impact of the incident, our channel checks in the short term indicate that the blockage is likely to contribute to the industry’s supply problems, which are already hampered by persistent supply chain bottlenecks (port congestion and vessels / container shortages) caused by COVID-19, as dieters divert current journeys to alternate routes, which will result in longer journey times and further delays, ”JPMorgan wrote in a note to customers.