SHIP-SHIP HOORAY! SUEZ BOAT IS FREE
After working for almost a week, salvage experts finally freed the massive Ever Given cargo ship from its wedged position in the Suez Canal on Monday — using loads of elbow grease and help from a high tide.
A flotilla of 10 tugboats wrenched the bulbous bow of the Empire State Building-size container ship from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been stuck since March 23.
The boats had pushed and pulled the vessel for five days after dredgers vacuumed up sand and mud from its bow.
The breakthrough early Monday followed what appeared to be a setback when the Japaneseowned, Panamanian-registered ship settled back into the diagonal position in which it had been stuck since running aground.
But aided by a high tide, the tugboats helped pull the vessel out from the side of the canal, straightening its heading as it slowly began to move.
After hauling the Ever Given over the canal bank, the salvagers pulled her toward Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, a wide stretch of water halfway between the north and south ends of the canal.
Satellite data from MarineTraffic, a global ship-tracking Web site, confirmed that the vessel was underway, moving off at about 1.5 knots from the shoreline toward the center of the vital global artery.
“We pulled it off!” said Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage company that was hired to dislodge the 200,000-ton behemoth, which, at 1,200 feet, is the length of four football fields.
“I am excited to announce that our team of experts, working in close collaboration with the Suez Canal Authority, successfully refloated the Ever Given . . . thereby making free passage through the Suez Canal possible again,” he added in a statement.
The ship is now expected to undergo a technical inspection before resuming its delayed voyage, canal authorities said.
It was unclear whether the ship, which was hauling goods from Asia to Europe, would continue to its original destination of Rotterdam or if it would have to enter another port for repairs.
Meanwhile, the 369 ships that had been caught in the logjam finally began moving in both directions by Monday evening local time.
The backup had created a massive traffic jam in the waterway, holding up $9 billion each day in global trade and straining supply chains already burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data firm Refinitiv estimated it could take more than 10 days to clear the flotilla completely.
Egyptian TV images showed tugboats blaring their horns as they towed the vessel.
“Adm. Osama Rabie, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), announces the resumption of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal after the authority successfully rescues and floats the giant Panamanian container ship EVER GIVEN,” read a statement from the SCA.
“She’s free,” said an official involved in the salvage operation.
The nearly weeklong closure of the Suez Canal will continue to weigh on the economy despite the massive container ship that had been stuck there finally being freed on Monday, experts said.
Dislodging the ship Ever Given, which had blocked the waterway since March 23, got one of the world’s most important trade arteries moving again.
Companies from Ikea to Caterpillar have been affected, and tens of thousands of livestock, mostly sheep, have been stuck on ships in the area.
Consumer goods like coffee, oil, toilet paper and even a massive shipment of sex toys also have been caught up in the jam.
While the long-term impact will likely be small given that global merchandise trade amounts to $18 trillion a year, the blockage has caused a bottleneck by throwing ships off schedule. Some 450 ships carrying cargo are now expected to be delayed in reaching their final destinations for weeks, if not months.
Over the course of the week, Egyptian authorities have been desperate to get traffic flowing again through the canal, which is a channel for about 12 percent of world trade, including about 1 million barrels of oil a day.
Fitch chief economist Brian Coulton told The Post that the Suez Canal debacle won’t likely have a material impact on gross domestic product, but it may put pressure on global inflation.
He said that the rising price of oil and other commodities is already impacting pricing — and that the Suez Canal incident is “exacerbating all that.”