Freeing jammed Suez Canal ship could take 'days to weeks'
Eight tugboats are working to refloat the Ever Given, which has been wedged sideways in the Suez Canal since Tuesday.
It could take days, if not weeks, to dislodge a massive container ship that remains stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal, a salvage company official said Thursday, as the bottleneck worsened in the world’s busiest waterway.
Eight tugboats are working to refloat the Ever Given, a 220,000-metric-ton container ship that was headed to the port of Rotterdam when 31 mph winds and a sandstorm Tuesday caused poor visibility and the vessel ran aground near the southern end of the canal.
Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie announced on Thursday that navigation through the narrow waterway is temporarily suspended until the 430-yard-long Ever Given is refloated. As of press time, 150 vessels are said to be lined up waiting to pass the stranded ship, 10 of which oil analytics firm Vortexa estimates are carrying 13 million barrels of oil.
“In our view, the situation now looks unlikely to be heading for a swift resolution,” London-based Braemar ACM Shipbroking told clients Thursday, per The Wall Street Journal.
