CAIRO — An oil tanker ran aground Wednesday in Egypt’s Suez Canal, briefly blocking the global waterway, an official said.
The Singaporean-flagged Affinity V vessel had become wedged in a single-lane stretch of the canal, said George Safwat, a spokesman for Suez Canal Authority.
He told a government-affiliated Extra News satellite television the authority that operates the canal deployed tugboats and managed to refloat the vessel. It ran aground around 7:15 p.m. local time, and was refloated some five hours later, he said.
Safwat said there was a problem in the vessel’s steering systems that caused it to run aground.
He said the vessel sailed from Portugal and was en route to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu.
The ship was built in 2016 with a length of 252 meters (827 feet) and a width of 45 meters (148 feet).
The vessel was part of a convoy heading to the Red Sea. The Suez Canal transits two convoys every day, one northbound to the Mediterranean and the other southbound to the Red Sea.
The incident comes over a year after a Japanese-owned megaship blocked the Suez Canal for a week, crippling world trade and triggering a six-day-long effort by Egyptian personnel and international salvage specialists to dislodge it.
The Panama-flagged vessel was on its way to the Dutch port of Rotterdam on March 23, 2021 when it slammed into the bank of a single-lane stretch of the canal about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez.
Its bow had touched the eastern wall of the canal, while its stern looked lodged against the western wall — an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of happening in the canal’s 150-year history.
This satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. shows the Ever Given cargo ship stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal, March 29, 2021. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)
A massive salvage effort by a flotilla of tugboats helped by the tides freed the skyscraper-sized vessel six days later, ending the crisis, and allowing hundreds of waiting ships to pass through the canal.
The wedging of the ship had created tailbacks to the north and south totaling 422 ships, with billions of dollars-worth of cargo.
Maritime data company Lloyd’s List said the blockage had held up an estimated $9.6 billion worth of cargo each day between Asia and Europe.
The canal is economically vital to Egypt, which lost between $12 and $15 million in revenues for each day the waterway was closed, according to the canal authority.
Nearly 19,000 ships navigated the canal in 2020, working out an average of just over 50 per day, it says.
After the Ever Given shipping vessel was freed, Egypt seized the ship and demanded compensation, setting off a financial dispute.
Egypt’s canal authorities and the Japanese owners of the vessel eventually reached a settlement, following weeks of negotiations and a court standoff.
