New operations are being prepared this Sunday to refloat the 300-metre wide sea-going behemoth stuck diagonally across the waterway.
Optimism prevailed on Sunday 28 March concerning the unblocking of the container ship stuck since Tuesday in the Suez Canal, in Egypt. A high tide expected in the evening could facilitate the task of the rescuers.
The immobile vessel was surrounded on Sunday morning by a number of tugs, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist on the scene. Its tall silhouette, some 60 metres high, dominated the fields and palm trees planted on the western shore. The area was under heavy surveillance by canal security, but also by military and police officers.
Delays and costs
The 220,000-ton, 400-metre vessel has been stuck since Tuesday in the southern part of the Suez Canal, a few kilometres from the city of the same name, preventing all traffic from passing through the passage, which accounts for more than 10% of international maritime trade. As a result, more than 300 ships are stuck at both ends of the canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, Rabie said on Saturday.
Each day of blockage causes major delays and costs to the industry, and the first concrete effects are being felt: Syria announced on Saturday that it had begun rationing fuel distribution, in response to the delayed delivery of an oil shipment.
Meanwhile, shipping giant Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd said on Thursday they were considering diverting their ships to the Cape of Good Hope, a 9,000-kilometre diversions and at least seven more days of sailing. Mr Rabie, speaking for the first time at a press conference on Saturday, cited possible « human error » as the cause of the incident. He said the weather conditions initially mentioned were not the only reason for the grounding.
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