CAIRO: All ships stranded by the grounding of a giant container ship in the Suez Canal in March have now passed through the canal, ending the backlog that built up during the blockage, officials said on Saturday.
The last 61 ships, out of 422 that were queuing when the MV Ever Given was dislodged on Monday, passed through the vital trade artery on Saturday, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said.
International supply chains were thrown into disarray when the 400-metre-long Ever Given ran aground in the canal on March 23, with specialist rescue teams taking almost a week to free it after extensive dredging and repeated tugging operations.
In total, 85 ships had been due to pass through the canal on Saturday including 24 that had arrived after Ever Given was dislodged, the SCA said.
An SCA investigation began on Wednesday into what caused the vessel to run aground in the canal and block the waterway for six days, chairman Osama Rabie told the TV station MBC Masr late Friday.
“The investigation is going well and will take two more days, then we will announce the results,” he added.
The wedging of the Japanese-owned, Taiwanese-operated ship had created tailbacks to the north and south, affecting billions of dollars worth of cargo.
Rabie has acknowledged that the blockage, which began when the Ever Given veered off course in a sandstorm, left Egypt’s international shipping and wider reputation on the line.
Egyptian authorities have presented the freeing of the mega-ship as a vindication of the country’s engineering and salvage capabilities.
“Ninety-nine percent” of personnel who worked to refloat the giant vessel were Egyptian, according to Rabie.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has pledged investment to ensure no repeat of the episode, and the SCA has called for new tugboats and dredgers.
The Maritime data company Lloyd’s List said the blockage had held up an estimated $9.6 billion worth of cargo each day between Asia and Europe.
The canal is economically vital to Egypt, which lost between $12 million and $15 million in revenues for each day the waterway was closed, according to the canal authority.
Nearly 19,000 ships navigated the canal in 2020, working out to an average of just over 50 per day, it says.
But the president and port authority have ruled out any further widening of the southern stretch of the canal where the boat became diagonally stuck.
Sisi oversaw an expansion of a northern section, which included widening an existing stretch and introducing a 35-kilometre parallel waterway, to much fanfare in 2014-15.
But that was achieved at a cost of over $8 billion, without significantly increasing revenues from the canal.
The Suez Canal earned Egypt just over $5.7 billion in 2019-20, little changed from the year before, and similar to the $5.3 billion in revenues earned back in 2014.
“Economically … (further expansion) would not be useful,” Sisi declared this week.
The costly blockage is likely to result in litigation, according to analysts, with the ship’s Japanese owners, Taiwanese operators and Egypt itself all under the microscope.