VESSEL MAY BE STUCK IN CANAL FOR WEEKS
Dredgers, tugboats and even a backhoe failed to free a giant cargo ship wedged in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Thursday. More than 150 vessels are now backed up, with hundreds more headed to the vital waterway, and losses to global shipping are mounting.
The skyscraper-sized Ever Given, carrying cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. Even helped by high tides, authorities have been unable to push the Panama-flagged container vessel aside, and they are looking for new ideas to free it.
As efforts to free it resumed at daylight Thursday, an Egyptian canal authority official said workers hoped to avoid offloading containers from the vessel as it would take days to do so and extend the closure.
So far, dredgers have tried to clear silt around the massive ship. Tugboats nudged the vessel, trying to gain momentum. From the shore, at least one backhoe dug into the canal’s sandy banks, suggesting the bow of the ship had plowed into it. However, satellite photos taken Thursday showed the vessel still stuck in the same location. The vessel remained stuck as of Thursday night despite “continuous” efforts to refloat it, officials said.
Lt. Gen. Osama Rabei, the head of the canal authority, said navigation through the waterway would remain halted until the Ever Given is refloated. A team specializing in salvaging arrived at the canal Thursday, although one of its top officials warned removing the vessel could take “days to weeks.”
Using data from Automatic Identification System trackers on ships at sea, data firm Refinitiv shared an analysis showing more than 300 ships remained on the way to the waterway over the next two weeks. Some vessels could still change course, but the crush of ships listing the Suez Canal as their destination shows an even greater backlog looms for shippers already under pressure amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Blocking something like the Suez Canal really sets in motion a number of dominoes toppling each other over,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of Denmark-based SeaIntelligence Consulting. “The effect is not only going to be the simple, immediate one with cargo being delayed over the next few weeks, but will actually have repercussions several months down the line for the supply chain.”