The skyscraper-sized container ship that has blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week has been partially refloated, raising hopes that one of the world’s most important trade routes may soon reopen and allow the backlog of vessels to pass through.
Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, said on Monday that it aimed to refloat the Ever Given on Monday morning after the back of the 220,000-tonne ship moved away from the west wall of the canal.
“We have floated the ship by 80 per cent because the bow is still partially stuck,” he said.
A high tide is expected at 11.30am local time, at which point the authority hopes to be able to float the ship fully.
But the chief executive of Boskalis, owner of salvage company Smit that is working on the rescue, urged caution over the timeline for reopening. Peter Berdowski told Dutch radio on Monday that completing the operation would not be “a piece of cake”, according to Reuters, and warned that containers may still have to be lifted off the vessel — a complicated and lengthy process given the ship’s location — as the bow remained stuck.
Rabie told Sky News Arabia that traffic through the canal would resume after the boat had been completely floated, but did not say what would happen if the bow remained problematic.
On Monday morning the ship’s automatic identification system (AIS) described the ship as “under way, using engine” and satellite tracking appeared to show its position had shifted, with the ship’s bow separated from the eastern bank of the canal.
“The only thing safe to say is the boat is still stuck and it is not necessarily [going to be] out the way as soon as possible,” said Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at Bimco, a shipowners’ industry association. “That’s what we need more than regular updates of the ship moving inches.”
The ship’s stern appears to have rotated towards the eastern bank, with a gap visible in the waterway for the first time since Tuesday.
News of the breakthrough sent oil prices lower, with Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, down almost 2 per cent at $63.52 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, fell a similar amount to $59.73 a barrel.
Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the Japanese company that owns the ship, had earlier said refloating was “near” after salvage experts changed the angle of the vessel. The latest effort to free the Ever Given, which has involved 10 tugboats and other equipment such as high-powered dredgers, made the breakthrough in the early hours of Monday.
The container ship, which is operated by the Taiwanese group Evergreen, has been wedged across the vital trade route since last Tuesday.
The blockage has created a build-up of about 370 vessels on either side of the canal, which carries roughly 12 per cent of global trade. About $10bn of trade passes through the canal each day, Lloyd’s List estimates.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the weekend ordered preparations for removing the containers from the ship if refloating efforts failed, raising fears the waterway could be cut off for weeks given the complicated and arduous nature of removing the goods far from port.
The disruption has hit at a time when global supply chains are already under strain, and the distortions caused by Covid-19 have placed particular pressure on the availability of containers. Soren Skou, chief executive of AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line, told the Financial Times the blockage would accelerate a shift away from just-in-time supply chains.
The prospect of a prolonged blockage of the canal has caused a number of shipping companies to reroute vessels around Africa, which adds substantial time and cost to voyages.
Once the canal is unblocked, the Suez Canal Authority plans to work to allow 150 ships to pass through a day, far more than the 90 vessels it can handle on a normal day.
Analysts at IHS Markit said last week that the refloating of the Ever Given “will result in a wave of container ships hitting Europe’s hub ports in quick succession, stressing port facilities and inland infrastructure”.
Additional reporting by Hudson Lockett in Hong Kong
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2021-03-29 07:29:00Z
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