Ever Given is FREED from Suez Canal in last-ditch attempt using supermoon king tide

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The massive container ship blocking the Suez Canal was straightened and partially refloated early today nearly a week after it ran aground on the vital shipping route and brought billions of dollars’ worth of trade to a standstill. 

Egyptian canal authorities said the 220,000-ton Ever Given had been turned ’80 per cent in the right direction’ after the stern of the vessel was shifted with ‘pulling manouevres’ that moved it 335ft from the shore.  

Satellite data from VesselFinder early this morning showed the straightened container ship surrounded by a squadron of tugboats with its stern no longer appearing to block the entire shipping route.  

Marine services provider Inchcape said the 1,300ft-long ship had been successfully re-floated at 4.30am local time and was being secured, six days after the bow got jammed in the Egyptian shore during high winds. 

Footage showed boats blaring their horns and a tugboat captain giving a thumbs-up as rescuers celebrated their breakthrough, with 11 boats taking advantage of a high tide brought on by the supermoon to partially refloat the ship. 

But it remained unclear how long it would take to fully re-open the canal, where hundreds of ships are waiting in a massive traffic jam with £6.5billion of global trade being held up each day.  

Egyptian lieutenant-general Osama Rabei said salvage crews would resume their attempts to pull the Panama-flagged ship into the middle of the waterway once high tide returns later on Monday morning.  

More than 300 vessels, carrying everything from crude oil to cattle, are still waiting to pass through the canal, while dozens more are taking the alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip – adding some two weeks and thousands of miles to journeys and threatening delivery delays. 

Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, an average of 52 per day, according to official figures. About 10 per cent of world trade flows through the canal. 

The world’s biggest shipping company, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, warned its customers that it would take anywhere from three to six days to clear the backlog of vessels at the canal. 

The obstruction could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Already, Syria has begun rationing the distribution of fuel in the war-torn country amid concerns of delays of shipments arriving. 

Romania’s animal health agency said 11 ships carrying livestock out of the country were also impacted, while the charity Animals International warned of a potential ‘tragedy’ affecting some 130,000 animals. 

Global container shipping was already in crisis because of disruptions caused by the pandemic, sending shipping costs rocketing because of limited space aboard the vessels.  

Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had ordered preparations for some of the ship’s 18,300 containers to be removed if dislodging efforts had failed. 

But as the high tides came in last night, diggers set to work removing parts of the canal’s bank while specialist tugboats also joined efforts to float the giant container ship. 

Egypt’s Leth Agencies said today’s breakthrough came after intensive efforts to push and pull the vessel with tugboats while vacuuming up sand underneath the ship. 

The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, which were called in to work alongside tugboats already on scene, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez earlier on Sunday. 

Rescuers including a team from Dutch firm Smit Salvage shifted at least 27,000 cubic metres of sand around the ship to reach a depth of 60ft, Egypt’s canal authority. 

‘We have movement, which is good news. But I wouldn’t say it’s a piece of cake now,’ Peter Berdowski, the CEO of Smit Salvage’s parent company Boskalis, told Dutch public radio. 

A canal official said the team on the ground had started technical checks and were reassured that the ship’s motor was working. 

Meanwhile an official from the ship’s Japanese owners, Shoei Kisen, said the Ever Given had been ‘stuck at an angle of 30 degrees towards the canal, but that has eased’.  

‘A total of 11 tug boats have been pulling Ever Given since this morning,’ they added, saying that while there was damage to the ship when it got stuck, ‘no new damage has been reported.’ 

Marine traffic through the canal will resume once the Ever Given is directed to the Great Lakes area, a wider section of the canal, authorities say. 

The Ever Given was due to head to Rotterdam after transiting the canal on its way from China, but it was unclear whether it would continue to the Dutch port after being freed or stop at another port for repairs. 

Taking containers off the ship likely would have added even more days to the canal’s closure, and required special equipment that wouldn’t have arrived until later in the week. 

Economists say the Ever Given’s disruption of shipping through the Suez Canal probably won’t have an impact on global trade for more than a few weeks, and is unlikely to derail global growth this year as more people get Covid-19 vaccines and economies reopen.

But it’s another wake-up call for companies that have set up their business to rely on supply chains with little room for error, said William Lee, chief economist at the Milken Institute.

‘This is a warning about how vulnerable our supply chains are and how the just-in-time inventory techniques that have been so popular have to be rethought,’ he said. ‘The shortages and the supply chain shortages that cause assembly lines to shut down – that will have a greater impact.’ 

This weekend it was revealed that ships containing livestock and IKEA furnishings had been left stranded in the  maritime traffic jam.

Gerit Weidinger, EU coordinator for NGO Animals International, told The Guardian: ‘My greatest fear is that animals run out of food and water and they get stuck on the ships because they cannot be unloaded somewhere else for paperwork reasons.’

Meanwhile IKEA said it had 110 containers on the stricken Ever Given and on other ships.

‘The blockage of the Suez Canal is an additional constraint to an already challenging and volatile situation for global supply chains brought on by the pandemic,’ an IKEA spokesperson said.   

Ships already are having to detour around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to avoid the canal. That slows the arrival of containers at their destinations and when they can be emptied and then refilled with other goods bound somewhere else. That can drive up costs – price increases that eventually reach consumers.

‘Shipping prices are going to go up,’ said Gary Hufbauer, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. ‘That will tighten up supply lines and mean shortages at the consumer level, and it will also mean somewhat higher prices for oil.’

The incident is another ripple worsening shortages of shipping containers in Asia, which means retailers may be late getting TVs, furniture, clothes, auto parts and many other goods that are shipped via containers.

Many countries got a harsh lesson in those realities last year when commerce, was disrupted in myriad ways after new coronavirus outbreaks began in China, the world’s factory floor.

Consumers everywhere soon found that ordering online was an adventure in the unknown, with many factories shut down and trade between Chinese provinces stalled. Obtaining supplies of medicines and vital personal protective equipment such as face masks and other medical supplies became challenging, and sometimes impossible.

About 12 per cent of global trade by volume goes through the Suez Canal, but it accounts for 30 per cent  of the world’s daily shipping container freight. That makes it the most important conduit for trade between Europe and Asia.

The closure also affects oil and gas shipments. Nearly 10 per cent of oil shipments and eight per cent of global liquid natural gas moves through the Suez Canal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Much of the traffic involves transpiration of crude oil from the Middle East to Europe and the U.S. It’s also become an important link for Russian oil to Asia.

The disruption from the canal blockage comes at tricky time for international trade and shipping, noted Fiona Boal, global head of commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

‘The cost of shipping goods from Asia to Europe hit a record high in recent months and global freight rates are already near three times the level of a year ago,’ she said.

At the same time, oil prices may be kept in check by worries that demand for oil will weaken amid renewed pandemic lockdowns in Europe. Benchmark U.S. crude oil for May delivery fell $1.03 to $59.91 per barrel on Monday after rising $2.41 on Friday. Brent crude oil for May delivery lost $1 to $63.43 per barrel after gaining $2.62 on Friday.

North and Latin America are likely to be less affected than Europe by the blockage in the Suez Canal, because much of the shipping container traffic that runs between the Americas and Asia moves through the Pacific to hubs like the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, or crosses through the Panama Canal.

‘The impact on the U.S. will be less than on Europe,’ Hufbauer said.

On Saturday, the head of the Suez Canal Authority told journalists that strong winds were ‘not the only cause’ for the Ever Given running aground, appearing to push back against conflicting assessments offered by others.

Lt. Gen. Osama Rabei said that an investigation was ongoing but did not rule out human or technical error.

Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement maintains that their ‘initial investigations rule out any mechanical or engine failure as a cause of the grounding.’

However, at least one initial report suggested a ‘blackout’ struck the hulking vessel, which is carrying some 20,000 containers, at the time of the incident. 

Asked about when they expected to free the vessel and reopen the canal, he said: ‘I can’t say because I do not know.’ 

Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the company that owns the vessel, earlier said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed.

On Friday, Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said that the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides.

Berdowski told the Dutch current affairs show Nieuwsuur that the front of the ship was stuck in sandy clay, but the rear ‘has not been completely pushed into the clay and that is positive because you can use the rear end to pull it free’. 

Berdowski said two large tugboats were on their way to the canal and were expected to arrive over the weekend. 

‘The combination of the (tug) boats we will have there, more ground dredged away and the high tide, we hope that will be enough to get the ship free somewhere early next week,’ he said.