Go Back

Ashburn, VA

61°F
Location Chevron down
Location News Videos
Use Current Location
Recent

Ashburn

Virginia

61°
No results found.
Try searching for a city, zip code or point of interest.
settings
Ashburn, VA Weather
Today WinterCast Local {stormName} Tracker Hourly Daily Radar MinuteCast Monthly Air Quality Health & Activities

Around the Globe

Hurricane Tracker

Severe Weather

Radar & Maps

News

News & Features

Astronomy

Business

Climate

Health

Recreation

Sports

Travel

Video

Podcasts

Winter Center

Top Stories AccuWeather Early AccuWeather Prime Astronomy Climate Travel Health Recreation Business Sports

News / Weather News

Traffic jam persists as ship is blocking Suez Canal like a 'beached whale'

Ship stuck in Suez Canal during extreme weather could take weeks to unblock

By Monica Danielle, AccuWeather senior producer

Published Mar 24, 2021 5:46 PM EDT | Updated Mar 25, 2021 7:33 PM EDT

Copied
Live Coverage For all things weather, 24 hours a day.

The Suez Canal Authority shared the latest update in their efforts to refloat this container ship in Egypt on March 25.

It could take weeks to unblock a massive container ship wedged in the Suez Canal like a "beached whale," officials said Thursday as the standstill in the critical waterway continued.

An estimated 100 ships are waiting to pass through the canal with cargo worth almost $10 billion in oil and consumer goods. With the canal accounting for approximately 30% of container shipping volumes, blocking it even for a short amount of time will cause oil prices to rise, The Financial Times reported.

"I can’t exclude that it can last weeks if the ship is really stuck,” said Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis Westminster, the parent company of an elite salvage team brought in after diggers and tug boats failed to budge the massive vessel. According to Bloomberg, Berdowski said the process would take that long if “you need to get rid of cargo and you need to do dredging as well." He added that bringing in all the equipment necessary for this operation is something "that’s not around the corner.”

Berdowski said the enormous size of the ship combined with the amount of cargo it's carrying is a two-fold problem. “It is like an enormous beached whale," he said, according to Reuters. "It’s an enormous weight on the sand. We might have to work with a combination of reducing the weight by removing containers, oil and water from the ship, tug boats and dredging of sand.”

Massive ship stuck in Suez Canal
Twitter

The front of the ship is wedged around 16 feet into the canal's wall. Legendary Dutch firm, SMIT Salvage BV, has been brought in to tackle the job. According to Bloomberg, employees of the company "fly from one shipping incident to the next, often boarding vessels during violent storms." 

The skyscraper-sized ship was heading from China to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands when it ran aground amid a severe dust storm early Tuesday that caused high winds and poor visibility in the canal. The 1,312-foot-long, 193-foot wide, 220,000-ton container vessel became wedged sideways, blocking all other vessels from passing through the man-made canal connecting Europe and Asia.

The ship's operator, the Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp., in a statement blamed powerful winds for the mishap, saying the gusts knocked the vessel off course as it was leaving the Red Sea and entering the Suez Canal, according to The Associated Press.

According to George Safwat, a spokesman for the authority that oversees the canal, the storm caused an “inability to direct the ship.”

The ship, named the Ever Given, is one of the largest cargo ships in the world. There have been no reports of injuries or pollution. But the massive stranded vessel has made for a worldwide spectacle that is visible from outer space. The aerospace company Airbus posted satellite images to Twitter on Thursday showing the giant ship completely blocking the Suez Canal, the clearest yet visuals from above of the totality of the blockage.

🔎 Suez canal blockage seen from space 🛰
Airbus-built Pléiades high-res. satellite image 📷taken this morning, showing a container ship stuck in the canal. pic.twitter.com/YOuz1NEXk8

— Airbus Space (@AirbusSpace) March 25, 2021

Egyptian officials, who operate the canal, have made several attempts to dislodge the ship from the banks using smaller tugboats, but after 24 hours had passed without success, ships were being diverted to an older channel that could cause week-long delays.

On Wednesday afternoon, according to the website of GAC, a shipping agent who works at the canal reported the grounded vessel had been partially refloated and that "crews were working to push the ship along one bank of the canal."

The Ever Given ran aground nearly 4 miles north of the southerly mouth of the canal near the city of Suez, an area of the canal that is a single lane. Additionally, poor weather conditions forced several of Egypt's largest ports to shut down on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, according to an oil export tracker, tankers hoping to enter the waterway are lined up on either side of the canal which carries roughly 10 percent of worldwide shipping traffic and typically allows 50 cargo ships to pass daily between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. According to Suez Canal Authority, nearly 19,000 ships with a net tonnage of 1.17 billion metric tons passed through the canal last year.

“The Suez Canal will not spare any efforts to ensure the restoration of navigation and to serve the movement of global trade,” Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority, said in a statement.

With the canal accounting for 12 percent of world trade, the impacts could be costly for global shipping which is already strained by the pandemic.

Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and associate professor of history at North Carolina’s Campbell University told The Associated Press that the impacts could be devastating. “Every day the canal is closed ... container ships and tankers are not delivering food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe and goods are not being exported from Europe to the Far East.”

On Wednesday, Reuters reported, the stuck ship was possibly causing impacts to the world oil market. According to Reuters, prices of crude oil had risen more than 2% after news of the calamity in the Suez Canal began spreading around the world. Prices were up $1.48 on Wednesday to more than $62 a barrel by midday.

Related:

Weather Explained: How and where do dust storms occur
Damages from Feb. winter storms could be as high as $155 billion
Drone gives stunning bird’s-eye view of erupting volcano

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, FuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. 

Report a Typo
Comments that don't add to the conversation may be automatically or manually removed by Facebook or AccuWeather. Profanity, personal attacks, and spam will not be tolerated.
Comments
Hide Comments

Weather News

Climate

Late-spring frost deals severe blow to Upstate New York vineyards

May 27, 2023
Weather Forecasts

Coastal storm to drench Southeast

May 28, 2023
Weather Forecasts

Midwest, Northeast to stay warm beyond Memorial Day

May 28, 2023
Show more Show less Chevron down

Topics

Top Stories

AccuWeather Early

AccuWeather Prime

Astronomy

Climate

Travel

Health

Recreation

Business

Sports

Top Stories

Severe Weather

Severe thunderstorms can hamper Memorial Day weekend plans

15 hours ago

Recreation

Shark bites off leg of American tourist in Turks and Caicos

2 days ago

Weather News

Chasing the light: NYC’s Manhattanhenge returns this week

9 hours ago

Live Blog

This Day in Weather History: Maryland city endures 2nd major flood

LATEST ENTRY

Catastrophic flooding strikes Maryland city 5 years ago

2 days ago

Hurricane

Powerhouse Typhoon Mawar sets sights on Philippines next

14 hours ago

More Stories

Featured Topic

Your Local Asthma Forecast

Featured Stories

Live Blog

This Day in Weather History: Maryland city endures 2nd major flood

LATEST ENTRY

Catastrophic flooding strikes Maryland city 5 years ago

2 days ago

Weather News

What is New York's famous Manhattanhenge?

2 days ago

Climate

Saber-toothed ancestor reveals how unstable life was during ‘the Great...

4 days ago

AccuWeather Weather News Traffic jam persists as ship is blocking Suez Canal like a 'beached whale'
Company
Proven Superior Accuracy About AccuWeather Digital Advertising Careers Press Contact Us
Products & Services
For Business For Partners For Advertising AccuWeather APIs AccuWeather Connect Podcast RealFeel® and RealFeel Shade™
Apps & Downloads
iPhone App Android App See all Apps & Downloads
Subscription Services
AccuWeather Premium AccuWeather Professional
More
AccuWeather Ready Business Health Hurricane Leisure and Recreation Severe Weather Space and Astronomy Sports Travel Weather News Winter Center
Company
Proven Superior Accuracy About AccuWeather Digital Advertising Careers Press Contact Us
Products & Services
For Business For Partners For Advertising AccuWeather APIs AccuWeather Connect Podcast RealFeel® and RealFeel Shade™
Apps & Downloads
iPhone App Android App See all Apps & Downloads
Subscription Services
AccuWeather Premium AccuWeather Professional
More
AccuWeather Ready Business Health Hurricane Leisure and Recreation Severe Weather Space and Astronomy Sports Travel Weather News Winter Center
© 2023 AccuWeather, Inc. "AccuWeather" and sun design are registered trademarks of AccuWeather, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Do Not Sell My Data checkmark Confirmed Not Selling Your Data

We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

I Understand

Get AccuWeather alerts as they happen with our browser notifications.

Notifications Enabled

Thanks! We’ll keep you informed.

FEEDBACK