Chennai: Askyscraper-sized cargo ship wedged across Egypt’s Suez Canal further imperiled global shipping today as at least 150 other vessels needing to pass through the crucial waterway idled waiting for the obstruction to clear, authorities said.
The container has choked traffic in both directions along the Suez Canal and created what is being referred to as the world’s largest shipping jam.
About a quarter mile long (400 meters) and weighing in at 200,000 metric tons, its sheer size is overwhelming the efforts to dig it out. A huge yellow excavator, itself about twice as tall as its driver, looked like child’s toy parked next to the ship’s bulking bow.
The situation has gotten so desperate that an elite salvage squad is due to arrive Thursday to work on prising the Ever Given from the bank of the canal, where it’s blocking oceangoing carriers that haul everything from oil to consumer goods.
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula.
In the time since, efforts to free the ship using dredgers, digging and the aid of high tides have yet to push the container vessel aside.
About 12% of global trade goes through the canal, making it so strategic that world powers have fought over the waterway since it was completed in 1869. For now, all that traffic is backed up with the Ever Given aground in the southern part of the canal, creating another setback for global supply chains already strained by the e-commerce boom linked to the pandemic.