Maritime traffic through the Suez Canal in Egypt resumed on Monday after a giant container ship that had blocked the busy waterway for almost a week returned, the canal authority said.
400 meters (430 yards) Ever Given got stuck diagonally across a southern part of the canal in strong winds at the beginning of last Tuesday and stopped traffic on the shortest shipping between Europe and Asia.
“She is free,” an official involved in the rescue operation was quoted as saying by Reuters.
After the dredging and excavation work over the weekend, rescue workers from the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) and a team from the Dutch company Smit Salvage partially managed to return the ship early on Monday with tugboats, say two marina and shipping sources.
Efforts to completely free the ship continued throughout the day.
The video published by SCA showed that Ever Given was escorted by the tugboats that helped free it, everyone who sounded their horns in cheers after almost a week of chaos.
“We pulled it off!” Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage company hired to extract Ever Given, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. “I am pleased to announce that our team of experts, working closely with the Suez Canal Authority, successfully recalled Ever given … thus enabling free passage through the Suez Canal again.”
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, is seen floating in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 29, 2021. (Suez Canal Authority via Reuters)
At least 369 vessels have piled up at each end of the canal, waiting to transit the canal, including dozens of container vessels, bulk carriers, oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels, SCA President Osama Sa Rabie.
SCA has said it can speed up convoys through the canal once Ever given has been released. “We will not waste a second,” Rabie told Egyptian state television.
He said it could take two and a half to three days to clear the backlog, and the canal source said more than 100 ships could enter the canal daily.
The shipping company Maersk said that the disruption in global shipping could take weeks or months to trigger. The computer company Refinitiv estimated that it could take more than ten days to clear the ships’ backlog.
After hauling the fully loaded 220,000-tonne vessel across the canal bank, the salvage team pulled the vessel toward Great Bitter Lake, a wide stretch of water halfway between the north and south ends of the canal, where the vessel will undergo technical inspection, the canal authorities said.
The container ship ever, considering landing in the Suez Canal, Egypt, is seen in a new position in this screen grab taken from a live tracking stream, March 29, 2021. (FleetMon via Reuters)
The obstacle has created a massive traffic jam in the vital passage, which holds up $ 9 billion every day in global trade and strains supply chains already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, dozens of ships have chosen the alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa – a 5,000-kilometer (3,100-mile) detour that provides two-week travel and costs ships hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel and other costs.
The liberation of the ship came after dredgers vacuumed up sand and mud from the ship’s bow and 10 tugs pushed and pulled the ship for five days and managed to partially float it at dawn.
It was not clear if Ever Given, a Panamanian Japanese ship transporting goods from Asia to Europe, would continue to its original destination, Rotterdam, or if it would have to enter another port for repairs.
In a statement, Evergreen Line said the container ship would be inspected for seaworthiness.
Evergreen informed that a decision on the ship’s cargo would be made after the inspection and that it would be coordinated with the ship’s owner after the investigation reports had been completed.
Shipowners did not offer a timeline for the resumption of the crucial channel, which carries over 10% of global trade, including 7% of world oil. More than 19,000 ships passed last year, according to the channel authorities.
Millions of barrels of oil and liquefied natural gas flow through the artery from the Persian Gulf to Europe and North America. Goods made in China – furniture, clothing, the basics of the supermarket – on their way to Europe must also cross the canal, or otherwise take the detour around Africa.
The unsurpassed shutdown had threatened to disrupt oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East, raising fears of long-term delays, commodity disputes and rising costs for consumers.
The rescue operation successfully relied only on tugs and dredges, which enabled the authorities to avoid the much more complex and lengthy task of lighting the ship by unloading its 20,000 containers.
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