A huge ship blocked the Suez Canal: why it can finish off the world economy

On Tuesday, March 23rd, the giant container ship Ever Given ran aground in the middle of the Suez Canal and created a huge traffic jam. Writes about it with the BBC.

12% of the world's cargo is transported through the canal, and the longer a 400-meter container ship is there, the more global trade suffers. According to the captain of the ship, he was literally blown off course by a powerful gust of wind.

This is the largest vessel that has ever experienced problems in the waters of Egypt. Its dimensions are 59 by 400 meters (this is the length of four football fields). Tugs and rescue boats managed to turn the vessel along the coast, but this is not enough to resume navigation. The work to free the ship lasts day and night.

The last time such an incident in the Suez Canal occurred in 2017, when a Japanese container ship ran aground due to technical malfunctions. Then the Egyptians managed to resume navigation in the strait in just a few hours.

An alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa could take about two weeks longer.

The ship's owner, Japanese firm Shoei Kinsen, has apologized for the damage done to global shipping and said its specialists are doing everything they can to get the giant moving. But this is still bad.

May take days or even weeks

“I don’t want to scare anyone, but it can take days or even weeks,” said Peter Berdowski, head of the Dutch company Smit Salvage. The company, which raised the sunken Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia and the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, is now trying to move the container ship along with other emergency services.

“It's like getting a whale off the beach,” Berdowski explained.

How many ships does Ever Given block and how much does it cost?

The blockade of the Suez Canal by the giant container ship Ever Given delays $ 9,6 billion in goods every day in different directions, writes with the BBC.

That is, it is $ 400 million of delays per hour on the key sea channel between the West and the East.

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According to Lloyd's List experts, $ 5,1 billion worth of goods was transported daily via the western traffic of the Suez Canal, and another $ 4,5 billion via the eastern one.

Despite all attempts to unblock the ship, the passage may remain closed for several weeks.

The troubled container ship Ever Given was chartered by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine. As already noted, its length of four football fields (400 meters) is one of the largest ocean freight transports in the world. The 200-ton ship can carry 000 containers at a time.

The canal, which separates Africa from the Middle East and Asia, is one of the busiest trade routes in the world, with about 12% of world trade passing through it.

They are transported to oil, as well as many consumer goods such as clothing, furniture, parts for manufacturing and automobiles.

More than 160 vessels have now gathered on both sides of the Suez Canal, according to Lloyd's List tracking data, including 41 bulk carriers (large bulk carriers) and 21 oil tankers.

BIMCO, the international shipping association, predicts delays will only grow.

“For each blocked day, I think it will take two days of work to eliminate these delays,” said Alan Baer, ​​president of logistics firm OL USA.

“Right now, three such days create six days of delays. I'm not sure if these are accurate calculations, but somewhere like that, ”he said.

In addition to thousands of filled containers, many empty ones are also blocked, which are used for exporting goods.

Emergency plans

If the delays are short, then most companies take care of them during transit.

However, if the Suez Canal is blocked for a few more days or even weeks, it will be a blow to the global supply channels, which are already affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“If it turns out that this will continue indefinitely, then the ships will start sailing around Africa, which will add seven to nine days to the route,” explains Baer.

“Once the cargo is already on board, there is little the sender or receiver can do to affect the expected arrival time,” he adds.

This means that some companies will think about more expensive air transportation or use the services of the railway.

The two largest shipping companies, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, are already talking about considering a route to bypass the Suez Canal.

The Egyptian administration of the canal says that it is doing everything to take the mega-container ship from the shallow - they are trying to move it by tugboats, special dredge ships and heavy earthmoving equipment.

While everything is standing, oil rises in price

Fears that this operation to rescue the vessel will last for weeks have become one of the factors behind the rise in oil prices, which has risen in price by 2%, writes with the BBC.

The situation could seriously affect the supply chain around the world, warns the secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping Guy Platten, and compensation for unforeseen expenses will ultimately fall on the shoulders of consumers.

“We are receiving reports that shipping companies have begun to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point in Africa. This is an additional distance of about 5600 km and an extra 12 days of travel, ”says Platten.

Due to problems in the Suez Canal, oil prices have risen. After a three-week fall due to loss of demand due to new lockdowns in Europe, prices rose by 2%.

Of the 39,2 million barrels of crude oil transported per day by sea in 2020, 1,74 million pass through the Suez Canal, according to Kpler, which tracks tankers.

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This week, prices for the transportation of oil products by sea have almost doubled, and the congestion in the Suez Canal was one of the reasons.

Oil markets were also affected by the escalation of the conflict in Yemen, where militants attacked the refineries of Saudi Arabia's state-owned company Aramco and its military installations.

OPEC is also expected to support oil prices by keeping production low.

QAnon Says Hillary Clinton Carrying Children

QAnon conspiracy theorists seeking to make sense of the blocking of the Suez Canal by a cargo ship argue that the ship is being used by Hillary Clinton to traffick children for sexual exploitation. News Week.

To back up their crazy idea, QAnon supporters point to the ship's operator, the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine Corporation. Clinton received the Secret Service codename Evergreen when her husband Bill Clinton was president.

The ship's call sign is H3RC - the same three letters as the initials of the 2016 presidential candidate.

In the Telegram encrypted messaging app, a QAnon account with over 106 subscribers wrote: “HRC = Hillary Rodham Clinton. Evergreen = The name of Hillary's secret service. Callsign of Evergreen: H000RC. "

QAnon proponents often misrepresent world events according to their theories or claim that they were predicted by a mysterious figure known as "Q".

Over the years, "Q" has left cryptic messages on sites that have been decoded to form the core of conspiracy theorists' beliefs. This includes the perception that leading Democrats and members of the Hollywood elite are child-eating pedophiles.

However, for several months, no new messages were published, and their frequency dropped significantly after Donald Trump lost the elections in November.

Conspiracy theorists, however, do not necessarily need new positions to lead the movement. They are simply rethinking the existing message catalog to suit their purpose.

This is not the first time the ship Evergreen has been involved in a QAnon child trafficking conspiracy.

In August 2020, a similar rumor spread after an explosion in the port of Beirut, which killed more than 200 people.

One image from the scene that was widely shared on Facebook contained the headline: “Evergreen Shipping Container. Human Trafficking by HRC ”.

The fact-checking website Politifact called the claim "false."

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