Stunning figures about the super-ship trapped in the Suez Canal

Yesterday (March 24), a super-heavy cargo ship suddenly ran aground in the Suez Canal (Egypt) and blocked this canal. According to Bloomberg, so far efforts to rescue the ship have not been successful at all, leading to the risk that the most important maritime route in the world will be congested for a long time.

The Suez Canal Authority said work needed to rescue the ship continued this morning. Workers are trying to dredge around the ship before taking the next step of pulling it out.

The ship Ever Given is so large that even calculating its magnitude requires a lot of effort. With a length of 400m, a weight of about 200,000 tons, its enormous size makes all attempts to dig the ship become hopeless. A large excavator with twice the height of the driver when placed next to the super train looks like a toy car.

The situation became so serious that an elite task force specialized in rescuing stranded ships would come to the Suez Canal today to “pry” the ship out of the canal. The best chance of rescuing the supership, though, will not appear before this Sunday or the following Monday, when the tide is at its peak, according to Nick Sloane, the expert responsible for rescuing the damaged ship Costa Concordia. capsized on the Italian coast in 2012.

About 12% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, making it so strategically important that since its completion in 1869 it has always been contested by major powers. Currently, the arterial road through Suez is blocked because the super ship is stuck in the northern part of the canal, seriously affecting the global supply chain that is being stretched to the limit before the boom. of e-commerce.

Every day more than 50 ships pass through the canal, shipping everything from consumer goods to machinery, electronic components and oil around the world.

The incident started yesterday, when strong winds blew through the area and caused sand to be pushed down the banks of the canal serving a lot of tankers carrying crude oil and cargo from the Middle East to Europe and North America. . In some sections, the canal narrowed to less than 205 meters wide, making it difficult to navigate the ship when visibility was limited.

The ship Ever Given is on the way from China to Rotterdam and before that the journey is still going smoothly. When winds rose at 46 mph and sent dust flying, the crew lost control and the ship was tilted to one side, traversing and blocking the entire canal. The ship is still in the same position as when it started to run aground.

The most important thing in this case is the ship’s enormous size.

Currently the rescue mission Ever Given is assigned to SMIT Salvage, a legendary company from the Netherlands. They first need to reduce the weight of the ship by removing things like ballast water (which makes the ship more stable while floating at sea). Even the ship’s fuel can be removed.

The Suez is the busiest canal in the world, serving tankers from the Mediterranean Sea to Europe and North America and vice versa. Yesterday, as many as 185 ships (mainly super large cargo ships, container ships, tankers and chemical tankers) were waiting in line to cross the canal.

Over the past decade, the size of container ships has nearly doubled as global trade has exploded, making it even more difficult to rescue these ships. Although the arterial waterways (including the Suez Canal) have been continuously expanded and deepened in recent years to accommodate super-heavy ships, once a ship is caught. stuck, the situation is always very difficult.

The incident also highlights a major risk that the transport industry is facing as more and more ships go through the “bottlenecks” such as the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. In the future such congestion will become more and more common as ships get bigger and more crowded canals.

Oil companies are starting to prepare for the worst. According to a broker, yesterday the need to book ships with route options to avoid the Suez Canal has increased. For now, however, that is only one option to consider, as the main alternative will wait until the congestion clears as otherwise the ships will have to go very long distances.

Capital is in a state of strong volatility, the oil market is heavily affected. In early March, crude oil prices soared above $ 70 after Saudi Arabia announced production cuts, then plunged to nearly $ 60 earlier this week on bad news about the Covid vaccine program- 19 in Europe. To the session yesterday, prices soared more than 5%.

Consult Bloomberg