The massive container ship MV Ever Given wedged across the Suez Canal, blocking the vital waterway. Photo / Julianne Cona / Instagram
Egyptian tug boats backed by an international team of salvage experts have been racing against the tides to reopen the Suez Canal after a vast container ship blown off course in high winds blocked the crucial waterway.
The Suez Canal Authority said it was trying to rebalance the 224,000-tonne ton ship in the hope that a high tide on Wednesday night (local time) would create enough extra draught to free it.
"Once we get this boat out, then that's it, things will go back to normal. God willing, we'll be done today," SAC Chairman Osama Rabie said.
The SAC has hired Smit Salvage, a Dutch maritime recovery firm, to help with the operation and 10 Dutch experts were en route to the country on Wednesday night.
If that fails, they may have to wait for a higher spring tide expected on the weekend or consider unloading some of the fully-laden ship's containers in order to lighten it, a difficult operation that could take days or even weeks in the absence of dock-side infrastructure.
An alternative would be to dig out a wide 'turning circle' in the soft sand banks that line the canal, but that too would take time and equipment.
"You really have to do the calculations to understand how solidly she [is] grounded, and how much power you can exert without damaging the vessel," said Martijn Schuttevaer, a spokesman for Boskalis, the company that owns Smit.
The cause of the incident was not immediately clear, but Egyptian authorities said it may have been affected by high winds and a sandstorm raging in the area at the time.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmangement, the German operator of the ship, said all 25 crew members were safe and that it was cooperating with local authorities to unblock the canal.
"BSM's immediate priorities are to safely re-float the vessel and for marine traffic in the Suez Canal to safely resume. The continued efforts of the Suez Canal Authority and those involved in ongoing re-floating operations are greatly appreciated," it said in a statement.
The grounding quickly created a tailback of other vessels.
At least 165 vessels are now waiting at either end of the canal with US$10b-worth of goods set to join the jam every day. European manufacturers that rely on "just in time" parts deliveries are particularly exposed.
The Ever Given was launched in 2018 and is owned by a Japanese company called Shoei Kisen Kaisha. It is chartered by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp. BSM is responsible for the day-to-day operational running of the vessel, including the hiring and management of the crew.
At 400 metres long and 60 metres across, it is longer than the Palace of Westminster or the Eiffel Tower and part of a controversial new class of cargo ships that critics say have grown too big to safely use.
Ultra Large Container Vessels began to appear in the first decade of this century as shipping firms looked to maximise savings on fuel through economies of scale.
The Ever Given is able to carry the equivalent of 20,000 units of 6 metre containers, twice as much as the largest ships afloat just a decade ago.
Although such ships have brought great efficiencies to their owners, they have been criticised for slowing down supply chains and causing accidents in ports and waterways they are too big for.
In February 2016, the CSCL Indian Ocean ship ran aground in the River Elbe as it tried to reach Hamburg. It took six days to free it.
In August 2017, the CSCL Jupiter ran aground in the river Scheldt as it left Antwerp. It was refloated in 12 hours.
John Konrad, a former sea captain who runs Gcaptain, an industry website, said the vessels had clearly grown "too big" and industry safety standards and technology had not kept up with the changes in size.
"A supertanker is the hardest vessel to sail, but it really sinks down low. As these container ships have grown bigger you have what we call sail area: the more stuff you stack on the deck of the ship the more area is affected by wind.
"The Aviation industry has put in tons and tons of training and investment into preventing this kind of thing in recent years, but nothing has been updated on ships for 10 or 20 years. Everything is slow and old, so if you are caught by a gust of wind and someone makes a mistake, things can compound very quickly."
Marc Levinson, Author of The Box - a history of the shipping container, said: "Shipping companies have embraced these super-large vessels in hopes of obtaining economies of scale. This has made global supply chains slower and less reliable, and this is just the latest example: ships are too big or too wide to move, and it takes too long to unload and load."
The manifests of such ships are rarely disclosed, but the Ever Given was travelling from China to the Netherlands – suggesting it could be carrying cargo such as manufacturing parts, consumer goods or even personal protective equipment for Covid, a large amount of which is made in Asia.
The Suez Canal is arguably the world's second-most-important waterway after the Panama Canal.
Opened in the mid-19th century, the 193km-long waterway accounted for 12 per cent of global trade in 2019, according to the Suez Canal Authority. It is a crucial link between East and West, allowing goods to flow from China to Europe at a far faster rate than other routes.
The waterway has only been closed five times in its history, with 15 ships stranded in it from 1967 to 1975 as a result of the Six Day War between Egypt and Israel.
In 2015, Egypt unveiled a US$8.5bn plan to expand the Suez canal, with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi hailing the plans – including deepening the waterway and adding a parallel channel – as a major forward step for the country.
A second channel now runs from the northern end of the Canal as far as the bitter lakes, an anchorage part way through. But the Ever Given ran aground in the single-channel section south of that.
Ships entering the canal usually take on an Egyptian pilot, but are not pulled by tugs.
Groundings are not unheard of. In 2004 the canal was closed for three days when the oil tanker Tropical Brilliance became lodged in a similar incident.
"The industry can wear one or two days delay with relative ease. The question is whether this goes on for longer and ships have to start looking for alternative routes," said Richard Meade, the editor of Lloyds List, a shipping industry journal.
Shipping firms will have to decide whether to set course for Suez and risk being held up, or sail around the Cape of Good Hope - a route that would add days to their journeys and burn considerably more fuel.
The value of goods held up by the blockage will build up by US$9.5bn dollars a day, according to Lloyds List. A six-day delay comparable to the grounding in the Elbe in 2016 would cause a severe shock to already-strained global supply routes, and cause major disruption to European manufacturers that rely on "just in time" parts deliveries.
The price of Brent crude oil rose on news of the disruption, with Coriolis estimating that and liquid natural gas worth $3.6bn passes through the canal every week.
Some of the world's biggest carmakers will be forced to extend their factory shutdowns due to a blockage, which may delay the delivery of semiconductor chips.
Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda have already reduced or halted production because of the global shortage in the crucial chips required to produce modern vehicles.
"Production is really vulnerable right now," says Tatsuo Yoshida, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. "Any kind of abnormal occurrence causes parts to run out."
Greg Knowler from JOC Group, a trade data provider, said the blockage came at a "particularly unhelpful time" with trade between Asia and Europe already "stretched to the limit",
The disruption comes at a tricky time for the global shipping industry, which was getting back to some normality after Covid sparked a surge in demand for exports from China.
JOC's Knowler warned looping around the southern tip of Africa would bring heavy costs and add another week to transit times. "Ships will also have to speed up to maintain their weekly schedules, and an increase of two knots over five days of extra steaming will burn an additional 1000 tonnes of fuel.
The driver was reported to authorities but tested negative for alcohol.