Suez Canal blocked again after ship runs aground
A large ship briefly ran aground in the Suez Canal on Thursday, blocking the busy trade route and forcing other vessels to be diverted down a parallel channel. The incident, which immediately drew comparisons with the giant container ship Ever Given which became stuck in the canal in March, was rectified before traffic could be disrupted, officials said. Coral Crystal, a Panama-flagged bulk carrier with a cargo of 43,000 tonnes, suffered from a temporary problem on its way southwards through the canal, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) confirmed. The ship briefly became stuck in the northern section of the Suez Canal but was soon refloated. Tracking website MarineTraffic showed Coral Crystal moving southwards again on Thursday afternoon using her own engine and heading for Port Sudan, a city in eastern Sudan. The carrier was shown to be moving at a speed of around 12 knots and surrounded by other large container ships. MarineTraffic showed Coral Crystal had been briefly stuck just south of the Egyptian city of El Qantara. Reports said it took just 15 minutes for tug boats dispatched to the site to successfully refloat the ship. “It was a minor traffic issue that was resolved in less than an hour,” a canal official told The National newspaper. At this point in the canal, two channels exist – one for traffic heading north, the other for ships tracking south – thanks to a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project commissioned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in 2015. The Ever Given, which was unable to move for six days, ran aground in a southern section of the canal which does not have a parallel channel. Hundreds of ships were unable to navigate the passage as engineers raced to free the 400-metre vessel earlier this year. Many were forced to take a much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa, requiring additional fuel and other costs. Roughly 15 per cent of world shipping traffic transits the Suez Canal, the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia. The SCA claimed the blockage in March would cost the world more than £730m. The container ship finally docked in the UK on 3 August – four months later than planned – and completed an uneventful return voyage through the canal weeks later en route to Singapore, where it will undergo repairs. It comes months after the Ever Given mega-ship blocked the canal for six days causing a global meltdown in shipping. In March, disaster struck when the 400m-long Ever Given became wedged in the shipping lane due to extreme weather conditions holding up £6.5billion a day in global trade. Rescue crews freed the vessel using tug boats and digging, even as analysts warned the monster vessel may be too heavy for such an operation. Eleven tugboats were helped by several diggers which vacuumed up sand underneath at high tide brought on by a “supermoon” – a full moon which raises the water level due to its gravitational pull on the earth, canal services firm Leth Agencies said. About 15 per cent of world shipping traffic transits the Suez Canal – around 19,000 ships last year – which is a key source of foreign currency revenue for Egypt. At least 369 vessels were waiting to transit the canal, including dozens of container ships, bulk carriers and oil and gas tankers. Some ships had decided to reroute their cargoes around the Cape of Good Hope, adding about two weeks to journeys and extra fuel costs. Crude oil prices fell after news the ship had been refloated with Brent crude down by $1 per barrel to $63.67. High winds are understood to have blown the boat, which was en route to the Netherlands from China, across the narrow canal that runs between Africa and the Sinai Peninsula.
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