Suez Canal reopens to traffic after giant ship is freed, operations to return to normal ‘within days’

A nearly week-long saga to dislodge a giant container ship stuck in the Suez Canal reached an end Monday as the vessel was freed and traffic resumed through the vital waterway. Authorities expected operations to return to normal within days.

Hundreds of vessels carrying everything from oil to livestock were forced to wait in line after the Ever Given became stuck in the canal. The accident was a stark reminder of the fragility of global trade infrastructure and threatened to further strain supply lines already stretched by the pandemic.

Horns sounded in celebration as the container ship — which is longer than the Eiffel Tower and weighs 220,000 tons — limped up the canal after a painstaking operation that saw teams of tugs and dredgers working day and night.

Salvage teams used the tides and a full moon to pull the ship from deep inside the sandy bank it had smashed into last week amid high winds and poor visibility. As part of their efforts, they shoveled 30,000 cubic metres of sand and even removed part of the canal wall.

Part of the problem was a five-day wait for two large tugboats, according to Peter Berdowski, chief executive officer of Boskalis Westminster, the parent company of the salvage team.

“We were enormously helped by the strong tide, the forces of nature that push hard, even harder than the two tugboats can pull,” he told Dutch radio.

“The men were euphoric of course. But there was a tense moment when this giant was floating freely. You need to bring it under control quickly with the tugboats before it gets stuck on the other side, we would have gone from bad to worse. Those were a tense 10 minutes.”

Clearing the queue of vessels may take as long as two and a half days, with canal operations returning to normal within four days, Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie said at a Monday evening press conference. The SCA is looking into incentives for vessels in line, he said, without giving details on options being considered.

Container ship YM Wish was the first to leave the Great Bitter Lake anchorage and enter the southern part of the canal, with more vessels following. There is also a line of as many as 12 vessels entering the northern end of the canal, led by the Biglift Barentsz, a heavy load carrier heading for Singapore.

Egyptian authorities were desperate to get traffic flowing again through the waterway that’s a conduit for about 12 per cent of world trade and about 1 million barrels of oil a day. This has been the canal’s longest closure since it was shut for eight years following the 1967 Six-Day War. Responsibility for the incident will be determined after an investigation, Rabie said, adding that SCA isn’t at fault and that the ship’s captain — and not the pilot — was responsible for the vessel.

Firms including A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and Hapag-Lloyd AG were forced to reroute their ships via the southern tip of Africa, which can add two weeks on to a journey between Europe and Asia. At least one ship appeared to do a double U-turn on Monday as news of the salvage operation emerged.

Dominoes have toppled

The long-term impact of the canal’s $10bn-per-day closure will likely be small given that global merchandise trade amounts to $18 trillion a year. Yet so many ships being thrown off schedule will ensure cargo delays for weeks, if not months. The dozen or so container carriers that control most of the world’s ocean freight are already charging record-high rates on some routes, and shortages of everything from chemicals and lumber to dockside labor already abound.

“The dominoes have been toppled,” Lars Jensen, chief executive of SeaIntelligence Consulting in Copenhagen, wrote on social media over the weekend. “The delays and re-routing which have already happened will cause ripple effects” which will be felt for several months.

Companies from Ikea to Caterpillar flagged potential impacts and tens of thousands of live animals are stuck on ships in the area. Consumer goods, industrial inputs and commodities from oil to coffee are caught up in the jam, with Asian exporters and European importers affected most directly.

The blockage held up about $400m an hour, based on rough calculations from Lloyd’s List that suggested westbound traffic to Europe is worth around $5.1bn a day and eastbound traffic is approximately $4.5bn.