Keep your fingers crossed. The massive cargo shop Ever Given is attempting to traverse the Suez Canal once more. Bloomberg reports that the ship is currently en route to the canal and is expected to arrive by December 12.
If you don’t recall the mess that initially happened during its Suez sails earlier this year, the ship became wedged in the canal when its bow dug into the sandy bottom. Crews worked overtime attempting to lodge the ship free. At one point, they only managed to move the ship 100 feet down the canal. From our own Erin Marquis:
The ship was moved 100 feet down the canal Monday morning, causing tugboat operators to honk their horns in victory. There’s still a lot to be done however, and the bow of the ship is still firmly planted in the soft sandy Egyptian soil.
Blocking one of the world’s most important trade routes for several days was extremely costly, with estimates putting the cost of goods lost at $10 billion per day. Egyptian officials were hopeful that the ship would’ve been removed quickly. But the ship, its crew, and over 18,000 containers of goods sat for six days. Then remained anchored in Egypt another three months before it was finally freed in June. A mounting legal mess followed, with the owners of the ship facing litigation from all sides. Bloomberg stated that there are potentially “thousands” of lawsuits that could be tied up in courts for years.
With the disruption in the global supply chain, and traffic data from Bloomberg showing that the ship to be fully loaded, a rather normal canal crossing for any other ship might just be a nail-biter for the Ever Given. Because a ship cannot become stuck and make the same mistake twice. Right?
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