Dislodging the ship that is stuck in the Suez Canal could take days or even weeks, experts said, as an ever-greater backlog of ships is gathering in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean waiting for passage.
As of Friday morning, the giant Ever Given vessel remained grounded in the same position, with tugboats and dredgers still working to free it, according to Canal service provider Leth Agencies.
A team from Boskalis, a Dutch firm specialised in salvaging, started working with the canal authority on Thursday. The rescue efforts have focused on dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the vessel’s bow.
Here are the latest updates:
VIDEO: Suez Canal jam explained
Turkey offers Egypt help for Suez jam
Turkey can send its Nene Hatun vessel to help resolve a blockage on the Suez Canal, Transport Minister Adil Karaismailoglu said, amid a recent push by Ankara to repair its strained ties with Egypt after years of animosity.
“We have conveyed our offer to help to our Egyptian brothers and if a positive response comes from them, our Nene Hatun ship is among the few in the world that can carry out work of this nature,” Karaismailoglu told broadcaster NTV, adding Ankara had not received a response yet but was ready to act.
Suez Canal Authority: Tugging operations to resume as soon as dredging is complete
Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority said that tugging operations to free the stranded container ship will resume after completing dredging operations to remove up to 20,000 cubic meters of sand.
The authority said dredgers had gotten within 15 metres of the bow of the ship and that they could only safely get as close as 10 meters.
The authority estimated that dredging operations were about 87 percent complete.
Images show the ship stuck at Suez
Following are satellite images showing the ship that is stuck in the Suez Canal:
‘Trying my best. No promises’
Meanwhile, there’s no let up in the torrent of memes and gifs lampooning the Suez Canal situation.
The Twitter account @SuezDiggerGuy, “Guy With the Digger at Suez Canal,” had nearly 15,000 followers by Friday and a profile line that read: “Trying my best. No promises.”
Netizens also conjured up Lego images of the digger and the bow of the container ship, which is carrying consumer goods from Chinese factories to European households.
Once it became clear the ship could be stuck for weeks, a website quickly spun up, https://istheshipstillstuck.com.
Here’s our larger take on Suez Canal memes.
Owner of ship aims to free Ever Given ‘tomorrow night’
Shoei Kisen, the Japanese owner of the container ship blocking the Suez Canal, said it aims to free the ship “tomorrow night Japan time”, the Nikkei reported on Friday, giving a much more positive outlook than most experts.
A spokeswoman for the owner in Japan said that the refloating work was ongoing but that the company did not yet know when the effort would succeed.
Downtime could ‘certainly last at least two weeks’
Speaking to Bloomberg, Randy Giveans, senior vice president of Equity Research for Energy Maritime at Jefferies LLC, said that if cargo needs to be unloaded or extensive repairs made to the canal itself, “then the downtime could certainly last at least two weeks”.
On Wednesday, Peter Berdowski, chief executive officer of Boskalis Westminster, the parent company of the salvage team, said “I can’t exclude that it can last weeks if the ship is really stuck”.
The process would take that long if “you need to get rid of cargo and you need to do dredging as well,” he said in an interview on the Nieuwsuur TV programme in the Netherlands.
Oil prices recover some ground on fears Suez blockage may last weeks
Oil prices reversed a sharp sell-off a day earlier to rise 1 percent on Friday on mounting fears that it could take weeks to dislodge the ship, which would squeeze supplies of crude and refined products.
Prices, however, were still headed for a third consecutive weekly loss, with the outlook for demand dented by fresh coronavirus lockdowns in Europe.
Brent crude was higher by 54 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $62.49 a barrel by 0432 GMT, after dropping 3.8 percent on Thursday.
Tugboats and dredgers still working to free ship
The vessel’s bow remains stuck in the eastern wall of the canal, while its stern appeared lodged against the western wall — an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of happening before in the canal’s 150-year history.
The Suez Canal Authority, which operates the waterway, has deployed several tugboats in efforts to refloat the massive vessel, including a specialized suction dredger that is able to shift 2,000 cubic meters of material every hour.
As of Friday morning, the vessel remained grounded in the same position, with tugboats and dredgers still working to free it, according to Canal service provider Leth Agencies. It reminded unclear when the route would reopen.
The Dutch to the rescue
A team from Boskalis, a Dutch firm specialised in salvaging, started working with the canal authority on Thursday. The rescue efforts have focused on dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the vessel’s bow.
The canal authority said that they would need to remove between 15,000 to 20,000 cubic meters (530,000 to 706,000 cubic feet) of sand to reach a depth of 12 to 16 meters (39 to 52 feet).
That depth is likely to allow the ship to float freely again, it said.
Headaches for global shipping
The blockage is caused headaches for global trade. Around 10 percent of world trade flows through the canal, which is particularly crucial for the transport of oil.
The closure also could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Mideast.
At least 150 ships were waiting for the Ever Given to be cleared, including vessels near Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea, Port Suez on the Red Sea and those already stuck in the canal system on Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, Leth Agencies said.
Here are five things to know about the Suez Canal gridlock.
Even-greater backlog looms for shippers
Using data from Automatic Identification System trackers on ships at sea, data firm Refinitiv shared an analysis with the Associated Press news agency showing over 300 ships remained en route to the waterway over the next two weeks.
Some vessels could still change course, but the crush of ships listing the Suez Canal as their destination shows that an even-greater backlog looms for shippers already under pressure amid the coronavirus pandemic.
