Financial ramifications of Suez blockage could be dire

The ship blocking the Suez Canal is barring an estimated US$9 billion worth of goods that should be passing through the waterway daily.

JOHANNESBURG, March 26 (ANA) – International lawyers say the blockage of the Suez Canal in Egypt will potentially cost millions, according to media platform Law.com.

The publisher wrote that as costs increase daily, the legal claims could have dire repercussions which could take years to resolve.

According to Law.com, the Japanese vessel owner, ship-leasing firm Shoei Kisen KK, said on Thursday that it was facing extreme difficulty in re-floating the grounded Ever Given in co-operation with the Suez Canal Authority, a Denmark-based tug operator and Maersk subsidiary Svitzer A/S and other agencies.

Citing shipping journal Lloyd’s List, on Friday, Africanews reported that the blockage was barring an estimated US$9 billion worth of goods that should be passing through the waterway daily.

The Suez Canal is a critical waterway used for 10% of the world’s maritime trade.

An ongoing mission has been under way to try and free the 400m-long container ship, which has been blocking the canal for days.

Africanews said normally 70 ships carrying four million tons of cargo would transit through the canal every day, which means millions of tons of cargo travelling to various destinations around the world have been sitting idle since Tuesday night. The vessel is one of the world’s largest container ships, carrying 20,000 containers and weighing more than 200,000 tons.

Al Jazeera quoted experts as saying that dislodging the ship could take days or even weeks.

“I can’t exclude that it can last weeks if the ship is really stuck,” Peter Berdowski, chief executive officer of Boskalis Westminster, the parent company of the salvage team, said in an interview on the Nieuwsuur TV programme in the Netherlands, as reported by Al Jazeera.

“The process would take that long if you need to get rid of cargo and you need to do dredging as well.”

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher