The great crisis of the Suez Canal: The number of ships waiting at both ends of the canal has reached 238, at least 10 days to be able to ‘rescue’ Ever Given

In fact, the fact that many cargo ships are cornered on the ends of the Suez Canal makes even after successfully rescuing the giant ship weighing more than 220,000 tons, the lifeline of this world trade will not end. right away.

In 2019, a total of 19,000 cargo ships passed through the Suez Canal, equivalent to 51.5 per day and carried about 1.17 billion tons of cargo. Therefore, the longer the congestion, the greater the number of ships that are compressed at the two ends of this route.

The direct consequence of the incident is that it will push up prices of many important commodities, from crude oil and raw materials to electronic equipment. As a reminder, about 13% of global merchandise trade passes through this canal.

According to Bloomberg, despite the successful rescue, there are still about 200 cargo ships of all types waiting to pass through the canal and this number is increasing day by day. The latest updates show that rescuing the ship Ever Given plugged into the canal wall has been unsuccessful and the possibility of unloading is being considered to reduce the payload.

As of March 25, 2021, the number of ships waiting at the two ends of the canal has reached 238, up sharply from 186 ships just 1 day earlier.

Egyptian authorities say they want to wait for the tide to rise to make it easier to save the ship and if so, at least freight ships have to wait another 10 days to clear the canal.

According to experts, if the wait is more than 2 weeks, the cargo ships on the Red Sea may use the old route, ie around the Cape of Africa’s Good Hope to transport goods to Europe. This bypass time will be about 2 weeks with loads of costs incurred. Reminder that the Mediterranean region has military bases of many countries with a rather complicated situation.

The situation is so serious that the Egyptian authorities are considering using heavy helicopters to quickly unload cargo from the Ever Given ship.

But this ship carries up to 500 containers and the only helicopter capable of lifting such heavy things is the Russian MI-26. The problem now is how to find enough helicopters as well as bring them to the rescue location.