One of the most important international shipping lanes remains blocked after the 220,000-tonne MV Ever Given ran aground and stuck in the Suez Canal, cutting off a vital transport route.
Attempts to run the ship aground have so far failed.
Loaded with nearly 20,000 containers, the Panama-flagged MV Ever Given – one of the largest container ships in the world – was sailing from China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and ran aground on Tuesday morning.
It is not yet known how exactly this happened, but at only 80 feet deep and 673 feet wide, the channel offers little room to maneuver, relatively speaking if the huge ship deviates from its course or suffers some kind of control error.
Satellite tracking data and photographs from the scene show that a fleet of small tugs and even a land excavator have spent all day trying to free the vessel, but so far it remains stuck along the canal.
There is literally no room for anything more than a tug. The Fleet Director of the company that operates Ever Given confirmed to Bloomberg that the vessel was affected by a “grounding incident,” but added that there were no injuries or reports of any contamination.
The Suez Canal runs through Egypt and connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea as the most direct route for the delivery of goods between Europe and Asia. It also handles thousands of tankers a year carrying oil and natural gas from fields in the Middle East heading to Europe and beyond. Without Suez, ships would have to sail around Africa.
