In all cases, however, the groundings were swiftly resolved. Never before has a ship become wedged athwart the width of the canal, like the Ever Given. The giant meter-long quarter-mile-long Ever Given, a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship that hauls cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck last Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal. Egyptian authorities suggested Saturday that human error may have been a factor. A squadron of tugs and diggers continued their struggle to free the Ever Given on Sunday.
Sections U. Science Technology Business U. Before the Ever Given: A look at the crises that closed Suez. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. The Associated Press. About one-fourth of that traffic is on container ships — like the one that is currently burrowed into one side wall of the canal. When it comes to shipping goods from Asia to Europe, there are virtually no alternatives such as rail or truck transportation, said Sharat Ganapati, an economics professor at Georgetown University.
The blockage will delay a range of parts and raw materials for European products such as cotton from India for clothes, petroleum from the Middle East for plastics, and auto parts from China, he said. There will be less direct impact on the United States, which receives most shipments from Asia on the West Coast. Still, imports from Europe may be delayed, and the blockage will prevent empty shipping containers from being returned to Asia, adding to a container shortage caused by rising demand for consumer goods during the pandemic.
The Suez situation could compound issues for a supply chain already under pressure from the pandemic and a surge in buying.
Virus-related restrictions have trapped crews on merchant ships. Congested ports have led to container ships anchoring off the California coast, unable to dock and unload their goods. Shortages of semiconductors and rare-earth elements have plagued manufacturers of cars and other consumer products. Finished products from Asia to the United States go over the Pacific.
The Ever Given saga left more than vessels, carrying everything from crude oil to cattle, piled up on either end of the canal as they waited for the stranded container ship to be refloated. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the backlog could be cleared within a week, said Laleh Khalili, an international politics professor at Queen Mary University of London.
There is likely to be congestion at European ports where many of the ships are headed, Khalili added. That bottleneck could last several months, Jan Hoffmann, an expert with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said at a news briefing Tuesday.
Port backlogs will then determine when containers on the delayed ships can be emptied before being refilled with other goods bound somewhere else. Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics. Recent months have seen a significant spike in global freight rates as both production and consumption rebounded from their pandemic lows as the global economy began to recuperate, Mangan said.
Some goods on the delayed ships may also now be spoiled or time-constrained — intended to arrive by Easter, this Sunday, for example — and could thus be worthless. Insurance and legal claims from companies whose vessels have been delayed and whose shipments have been disrupted are likely to rumble on for some time to come, according to maritime arbitrator Jeffrey Blum.
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