Giant Ship Blocking Suez Canal Is Costing World Economy $400 Million Per Hour

In case you were living under a rock or something, you¡¯d know that a massive cargo ship has blocked one of the most crucial sea routes in the world -- the Suez Canal.

The Ever Given container ship has gotten stuck horizontally across the crucial canal that connects Asia and Europe, leaving no room for any vessel to pass through.

AFP

Suez Canal ship block

A trade route that is known to connect Europe to Asia, the Suez Canal is being blocked by container ship Ever Given, which is showing no signs of budging and now experts estimate that this obstruction is causing a $400 million loss per hour due to delay in delivery of the goods.

This is according to Lloyd¡¯s List -- a London-based shipping news journal. The journal claims that on average the estimated value of goods passing through the suez canal is somewhere around $9.7 billion -- from this $5.1 billion belongs to goods travelling west and $4.6 billion belongs to goods travelling east.

Traffic in Suez Canal

Every day, over 50 ships pass through this canal. Since the three days this block has been placed, nearly 165 vessels haven¡¯t passed through it, and from the looks of it, Ever Given is going nowhere for now, and it could take weeks to dislodge the gargantuan vessel.

This block comes during a time when the nations around the world are already experiencing an extremely strained supply chain, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic that wreaked havoc in 2020.

This current block has forced several seafarers to take the longer, and rather dangerous route from Africa¡¯s southern tip, which also is more expensive.

AFP

Suez Canal dredging operations

As of now, authorities are completing dredging operations to remove up to 20,000 cubic meters of sand.

The dredgers have gotten within 15 meters of the bow of the ship and 10 meters is as close as they can go while being safe. The dredging operations were about 87 percent complete at the time of writing this article.

In fact, because of the Suez Canal block of container ship Ever Given, the trailing ships blocked out of the canal are choosing to circumnavigate the entire African continent, a journey of several thousand kilometres. Take a look:

theyre actually doing it! ever given has been there so long that theyre actually going around the cape of good hope like 1700s scurvy patients oh my god pic.twitter.com/WjElTVfg1q

— Aria Callaghan (@AriaCallaghan) March 25, 2021