CAIRO — An enormous
container ship became stuck while traversing the Suez Canal, blocking traffic
through one of the world’s most important shipping arteries and threatening to
add one more burden to a global shipping industry already battered by the
coronavirus pandemic.
اضافة اعلان
The ship, which was heading from China to the port
of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, ran aground amid poor visibility and high
winds from a sandstorm that struck much of northern Egypt this week, according
to George Safwat, a spokesman for the authority that oversees the canal. The
storm caused an “inability to direct the ship,” he said in a statement.
More than 100 ships were stuck at each end of the
canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and carries roughly 10
percent of worldwide shipping traffic.
Dozens of tugboats raced to try and wrench it free
as crews on the land brought heavy equipment to dig out the land where it sat
wedged.
Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, the head of the canal
authority, said that the authority was reopening an older section of the canal
to allow ships to move through the waterway.
Nearly every vessel traveling from Asia to Europe
passes through the 193km- channel. The Suez is also a corridor for some ships
carrying cargo from Asia to the east coast of the United States, as well as a
pathway from North Africa to the rest of the world. Only the Panama Canal looms
as large in the passage of goods around the globe.
“The Suez Canal will not spare any efforts to
restore navigation and to serve the movement of global trade,” Rabie said in a
statement, adding that rescue units and eight tugboats were continuing to try
to refloat the stuck vessel.
If authorities in Egypt are able to free the
vessel from the bottom of the channel and move it to the side of the waterway
within two to three days, the episode will be a minor inconvenience to the
industry. Shipping companies generally build in extra days to their schedules
to account for delays en route.
But if the ship’s extraction proves more complex,
leaving the Suez blocked for longer, that could pose a substantial risk for an
industry that is already overwhelmed. Global maritime trade has taken a hit
over the last year because of the pandemic, pushing Egypt’s revenues from the
canal down 3 percent to $5.61 billion in 2020.
“If that’s going to be a knock-on delay, then
you’ll see piling up and bunching up of ships on their arrival in Europe as
well,” said Akhil Nair, vice president of global carrier management at SEKO
Logistics in Hong Kong. “It’s just one more factor that we didn’t need.”
Pictures from the canal showed the container-laden
ship — the Ever Given, which is almost a 402m long — sitting sideways across
the canal at such an angle that the name of the company that operates it,
Evergreen, is clearly readable from the ship behind it. Its bow appeared to be
stuck on the canal’s rocky eastern bank.
“Ship in front of us ran aground while going
through the canal and is now stuck sideways,” an Instagram user named
@fallenhearts17 posted. “Looks like we might be here for a little bit …”
The Suez Canal is a key artery for oil flows from
the Persian Gulf region to Europe and North America. Roughly 5 percent of
globally traded crude oil and 10 percent of refined petroleum products passed
through the canal before the pandemic, estimated David Fyfe, chief economist at
Argus Media, a market research firm.
After the canal was snarled, there was a 2.85
percent jump in the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, to
$62.52 a barrel.
But Fyfe said that because the demand for oil
remained relatively weak amid the pandemic, a short-term outage is unlikely to
have a lasting impact on the market.
“I don’t think this is going to fundamentally
change market sentiment,” he said. “A lot will depend on how quickly they can
get the vessel cleared.”
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