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Busy shipping lane blocked after huge cargo ship runs aground

蘋果日報 2021/03/25 05:55


Egypt’s Suez Canal on Tuesday was blocked by a Taiwanese-owned cargo ship that got stuck in a horizontal position, a rare mishap that prevented other vessels from passing through one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.
By Wednesday noon local time, the grounded ship, named Ever Given, had been partially refloated and was alongside the canal bank, according to a statement by shipping agency GAC Egypt, quoting information from the Suez Canal Authority.
Convoys and traffic were expected to resume as soon as the ship was towed to another position, the statement added.
The Panama-flagged ship, measuring 400 meters long and 59 meters wide, had been lodged at a horizontal angle across the waterway.
The ship may have deviated from its course due to sudden strong winds, resulting in it being stranded, according to Evergreen Marine Corp, the Taiwanese company that owns the vessel. The Suez Canal Authority echoed this assessment, attributing the incident to “the lack of visibility due to the weather conditions when winds reached 40 knots, which affected the control” of the ship.
During the blockage, oil prices dropped 0.53% to US$60.47 per barrel, before rebounding to US$61.18 per barrel.
Shipping website Vessel Finder said the ship was bound for Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Instagram user Julianne Cona posted a captioned photo of the incident on Tuesday, showing the ship jammed sideways across the canal.
The Suez Canal runs to a length of 190 kilometers and is 205 meters wide. It is one of the busiest waterways in the world and connects Europe, Asia and Africa. Some 18,880 vessels passed through the canal in 2019, accounting for 1.2 billion tons of freight.
A similar incident happened in 2006 when a Hong Kong-flagged ship drifted off course in the Suez Canal during a sandstorm and blocked all transit.
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