Egypt’s Suez Canal chief said Saturday that “technical or human errors” could be behind the grounding of a huge container ship blocking the vital waterway, causing a backlog of over 300 vessels. Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, told reporters in Suez that the ship could possibly be afloat again by Sunday night. The crisis has crippled global supply … Continue reading Human Error Could Be Behind Suez Canal Blockage, Says Official
This satellite imagery released by Maxar Technologies shows tug boats and dredgers on March 27, 2021, attempting to free the Taiwan-owned MV Ever Given lodged sideways and impeding all traffic across Egypt’s Suez Canal. Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies / AFPEgypt’s Suez Canal chief said Saturday that “technical or human errors” could be behind the grounding of a huge container ship blocking the vital waterway, causing a backlog of over 300 vessels.
That has forced cargo firms to decide whether to wait it out or take the longer, more expensive route around the Cape of Good Hope — at the cost of up to 12 additional days at sea. Yukito Higaki, president of Japanese firm Shoei Kisen which owns the vessel, told local media on Friday that the ship could be freed from the canal bed by late Saturday.
“That will allow us to eventually remove all the containers from the foredeck, which could involve hundreds of containers.” But the vessel with gross tonnage of 219,000 and deadweight of 199,000 has yet to budge, forcing global shipping giant Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd to look into re-routing around Africa.
Lloyd’s List said the blockage was holding up an estimated $9.6 billion worth of cargo each day between Asia and Europe.