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
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.”
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.
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.
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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
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.”
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.
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.
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