ISMAILIA (Egypt) • A giant container ship grounded in the Suez Canal could be freed by the start of this week if heavier tugboats, dredging and a high tide succeed in dislodging it, a Dutch firm working to free the vessel has said.
The 400m-long Ever Given became wedged diagonally across a southern section of the canal amid high winds last Tuesday, disrupting global shipping by blocking one of the world's busiest waterways.
About 15 per cent of world shipping traffic passes through the canal, and hundreds of vessels are waiting to pass through the waterway once the blockage has been cleared.
Dredgers removed about 20,000 tonnes of sand from around the ship's bow by Friday, but tugging operations to free the ship were suspended that night.
"We aim to get it done after the weekend, but everything will have to work out exactly right for that," Mr Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Boskalis, told Dutch TV programme Nieuwsuur late on Friday.
Boskalis owns Smit Salvage, which was brought in last week to help with efforts by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) to dislodge the ship.
"The bow (front) is really stuck in the sandy clay, but the stern (rear) has not been pushed totally into the clay, which is positive. We can try to use that as leverage to pull it loose," Mr Berdowski said.
"Heavy tugboats, with a combined capacity of 400 tons, will arrive this weekend. We hope that a combination of the tugboats, dredging of sand at the bow and a high tide will enable us to get the ship loose at the beginning of next week."
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly yesterday thanked foreign partners for offers to help refloat the ship and said the SCA's chairman would brief media on details of the operation to release the ship.
Shipping rates for oil product tankers nearly doubled after the ship became stranded, and the blockage has scrambled global supply chains, threatening costly delays for companies already dealing with Covid-19 restrictions.
If tugs and diggers are not able to dislodge the container ship blocking traffic soon, ships will have to divert around Africa, adding weeks to journeys, Singapore's Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung said in a Facebook post last Thursday.
He also said that the Malacca and Singapore straits could be affected, as the incident "illustrates how the world is now so closely interwoven together".
A total of 288 vessels were waiting to enter or continue their transit through the canal as at Friday, including 65 container ships, 63 bulk carriers and 23 liquefied natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas carriers, according to a shipping source.
Three shipping agents said yesterday that none of the ships waiting at the canal's entrances had yet requested to be rerouted.
Boskalis and Smit Salvage have warned that using too much force to tug the ship could damage it.
Mr Berdowski said a land crane would be brought in at the weekend that could lighten the Ever Given's load by removing containers, though experts have warned that such a process could be complex and lengthy.
"If we don't succeed in getting it loose next week, we will have to remove some 600 containers from the bow to reduce the weight," he said.
"That will set us back days at least, because where to leave all those containers will be quite a puzzle."
REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
