Today, we talk about a man made ship, stuck in a man made canal caused losses of millions in man made currencies.
What is Suez Canal, you ask?
It is an artificial sea-level waterway that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, separating the continents -Africa and Asia. Around 19,000 ships passed through the Suez Canal in the year 2020.
Why is it important?
It is one of the world’s busiest trade routes, carrying approximately 12 to 15% of the world trade by volume and provides the shortest sea-link between Asia and Europe. The shipment includes crude oil, refined oil and liquefied natural gas ,apart from the consumer goods, which accounts to about 5% to 10% of the global shipments.
The Incident
On 23 March,2021MV Ever Given, the container ship, en route to Dutch Point of Rotterdam, got stuck in Suez Canal. The high winds pushed the ship sideways, wedging it into both banks of the waterway. However, an investigation will be carried out to know whether the incident involves human error or technological error apart from the weather conditions.
Rescue
The SCA (Suez Canal Authority) used tug and rescue units to free the MV Ever Given. The front of the ship was wedged about five meters in the canal’s bank and the dredgers (Large machines stick down into the water and basically pull dirt up from the bottom and deposit elsewhere) were brought in to dig mud and sand from under the bow and stern of the ship.
Unloading the ship was avoided as it might had about weeks or even months to do so. However, if tug boats and dredgers had failed, this would have been the third option.
Finally the Ever Given got freed on 29th March,2021 with the help of tugboats and dredgers aided with the high tides allowing the ship to regain buoyancy.
Consequences
The blockage of the Suez canal had led to traffic on either side of the canal with hundreds of ships waiting to cross through. And it was estimated to causing a loss of $400 million each hour. A prolonged blockage have been extremely expensive for the owners of the ship waiting to pass through the canal. Some decided to reroute their vessel around the Cape of Good Hope but this added about two more weeks to their journey and increased the possibility of delays in delivery.
Shipping rates for oil product tankers had nearly doubled after the stranding of the vessel and disrupted global supply chains threaten costly delays for companies already dealing with Covid-19 restrictions, Reuters said.
All we can say is, While the ship was stuck for few days, it’s news did travel to all over the world!
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