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Ship refloated after becoming stuck in Egypt's Suez Canal

September 9, 2021 at 3:28 pm

The Suez Canal in Egypt, 2 June 2020 [Vyacheslav Argenberg/Flickr]

A bulk carrier briefly became stuck in the northern section of the Suez Canal today but was refloated and there was no impact on traffic, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said in a statement.

The Panama-flagged Coral Crystal, with a cargo of 43,000 tonnes, suffered from a temporary problem on its way southwards through the canal, the SCA said, but ships behind it were diverted through a parallel channel.

In March this  year the Ever Green ship, one of the world’s largest container transportation vessels, blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week.

The 400m-long cargo ship held up around $9.6 billion worth of goods each day, and forced many ships to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa, after a sandstorm left it wedged sideways across the canal.

Rescue workers from the Suez Canal Authority and a Dutch company used tug boats to move the ship as 367 vessels waited for traffic to resume along the canal.

Egypt’s 193-kilometre-long man-made waterway is one of the world’s busiest trade routes that connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, linking trade between Asia and East Africa on the one hand, and Europe, the Americas and West Africa on the other.

As for alternative routes to the Suez Canal, there are only two alternative sea routes, namely the Cape of Good Hope route and the Arctic route.

A third route crosses the Pacific Ocean but is much longer and only practical for trade between the Western Americas and East Asia. Therefore, it does not compete with the Suez Canal.

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