Container ship blocking Suez refloated, but still stuck at canal’s edge

Tugboats pull the Panama-flagged MV Ever Given container ship, lodged sideways impeding traffic across Suez Canal waterway. Pic/AFP

Engineers on Monday "partially re-floated" the colossal container ship that continues to block traffic through the Suez Canal, authorities said, without providing further details about when the vessel would be set free.

Satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed that the ship's bulbous bow, once lodged deep in the canal's eastern bank, had been partly wrested from the shore, although it remained stuck at the canal's edge. The ship's stern had swung around and was now in the middle of the waterway, tracking data showed. Although the development marked the vessel's most significant movement since getting stuck last week, the salvage crew urged caution as obstacles loomed.

"Don't cheer too soon," Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, told Dutch NPO Radio 1. Last Tuesday, the skyscraper-sized Ever Given got stuck sideways in the crucial waterway, creating a massive traffic jam. The obstruction has held up $9 billion each day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened by the Coronavirus pandemic.

At least 367 vessels, carrying everything from crude oil to cattle, were still waiting to pass through the canal, while dozens were taking the alternate route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip, a detour that adds some two weeks to journeys and costs ships hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel and other costs.

With canal transits stopped, Egypt already has lost over $95 million in revenue, according to the data firm Refinitiv. If the ship is freed in the next few days, clearing the backlog of ships already waiting to pass through the canal would take at least 10 days, Refinitiv added.

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