25 March 2021: Maritime Maunder does not typically report on news stories (except the America's Cup last week!) but the current situation in the Suez Canal - perhaps the busiest waterway in the world - is worth a look, especially since there seems no likely explanation for what happened. From AP:
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ISMAILIA, Egypt (AP) — A skyscraper-sized container ship has become wedged across Egypt’s Suez Canal and blocked all traffic in the vital waterway, officials said Wednesday [ed: 3/24], threatening to disrupt a global shipping system already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
Satellite image of Ever Given
Tugboats strained Wednesday to try to nudge the obstruction out of the way as ships hoping to enter the waterway began lining up in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But it remained unclear when the route, through which around 10% of world trade flows and which is particularly crucial for the transport of oil [ed:emphasis ours], would reopen. One official warned it could take at least two days. In the meantime, there were concerns that idling ships could become targets for attacks. [ed: they are now talking as much as 2 weeks]
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given, said all 20 members of the crew were safe and that there had been “no reports of injuries or pollution.”
The refloating operation was temporarily suspended late Wednesday and will be resumed early Thursday, according to canal service provider Leth Agencies.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the ship to become wedged on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said the ship had experienced a blackout without elaborating.
Bernhard Schulte, however, denied the ship ever lost power.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the ship, said in a statement that the Ever Given had been overcome by strong winds as it entered the canal from the Red Sea but none of its containers had sunk.
An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists, similarly blamed a strong wind. Egyptian forecasters said high winds and a sandstorm plagued the area Tuesday, with winds gusting as much as 50 kph (30 mph).
However, it remained unclear how winds of that speed alone would have been able to push a fully laden vessel weighing some 220,000 tons.[ed: we agree - highly unlikely]
A pilot from Egypt’s canal authority typically boards a ship to guide it through the waterway, though the ship’s captain retains ultimate authority over the vessel, said Ranjith Raja, a lead analyst at the data firm Refinitiv. The vessel entered the canal some 45 minutes before it became stuck, moving at 12.8 knots (about 24 kph, 15 mph) just before the crash, he said.
An image posted to Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show the Ever Given wedged across the canal as shown in satellite images and data. A backhoe appeared to be That could have a major knock-on effect for global shipping moving between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and associate professor of history at North Carolina’s Campbell University.
“Every day, 50 vessels on average go through that canal, so the closing of the canal means no vessels are transiting north and south,” Mercogliano told the AP. “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.”
Already, some 30 vessels waited at Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake midway on the canal, while some 40 idled in the Mediterranean near Port Said and another 30 at Suez in the Red Sea, according to Leth Agencies. That included seven vessels carrying some 5 million barrels of crude oil, Refinitiv said.
In addition to the economic implications, security experts warned that idling ships in the Red Sea could be targets after a series of attacks against shipping in the Mideast amid tensions between Iran and the U.S.
“All vessels should consider adopting a heightened posture of alertness if forced to remain static within the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden,” warned private marine intelligence firm Dryad Global.
The closure also could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Mideast. The price of international benchmark Brent crude jumped nearly 2.9% to $62.52 a barrel Wednesday.
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So there it is. Suez closed to all traffic for an indeterminate time period. And the world waits for: 1) causal explanation (not buying a 30MPH breeze for a second), 2)figuring out how to "unstick" it and 3)how high will the world-wide price of oil get. 4) Will Iran or pirates attack waiting ships. We ask: Could it have been intentional? Time will tell.
Until next time,
Fair Winds,
Old Salt
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