Tag: ship

Categories
Politics

Courtroom Paperwork Establish Sailor Charged With Arson in Fireplace That Destroyed Ship

Court Documents Identify Sailor Charged With Arson in Fire That Destroyed Ship

WASHINGTON — Investigators have identified the Navy sailor accused of starting a fire that engulfed the warship Bonhomme Richard and burned for days at a Navy base in San Diego last year.

The sailor, Ryan Sawyer Mays, 20, joined the service in May 2019 and holds the rank of seaman apprentice, according to Navy records. The Navy formally charged Seaman Mays with aggravated arson and hazarding a vessel last month but declined to provide additional details until federal search warrants were unsealed by a federal court in San Diego on Tuesday.

Documents filed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service describe a sailor who “hated” the Navy after being sent to a warship following a brief stint as a SEAL trainee in late 2019.

Seaman Mays quit the difficult six-month initial SEAL training course in Coronado, Calif., after just five days, according to the filing.

The fire, one of the worst to engulf an American warship outside combat, rendered the ship inoperative while it was pierside at the base. More than 400 sailors from 16 nearby ships fought the blaze, which reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees and took four days to extinguish.

A lawyer representing Seaman Mays said his client had “maintained his innocence throughout this entire ordeal.”

“He’s presumed innocent, and we look forward for the opportunity to review the evidence and presenting a case on his behalf,” the lawyer, Gary S. Barthel, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Seaman Mays, whose identity was reported earlier by The Daily Beast, was confined in a Navy brig from late August to approximately mid-October 2020 and then released, according to Mr. Barthel. It is unclear why the Navy freed Seaman Mays months before he was formally charged.

After his release from the brig, Seaman Mays reported to the staff of Amphibious Squadron 5 in San Diego, where he is currently assigned.

“He’s expected to perform his duties as he would any other day of the week as any other sailor would,” Mr. Barthel said of his client. “There are no restrictions on his movement.”

Mr. Barthel said his client voluntarily quit the SEAL program, and hopes to re-enter training in the future.

“I think he’d like to go back if given the opportunity, if he meets all the other qualifications,” Mr. Barthel said.

A spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, which oversees SEAL training, could not immediately confirm the details described by N.C.I.S.

Navy records show that Seaman Mays left the Naval Special Warfare training center on March 6, 2020, and reported to the Bonhomme Richard on March 23.

The N.C.I.S. report said that the Bonhomme Richard’s command master chief — the ship’s senior-most enlisted sailor and a top adviser to the commanding officer — described Seaman Mays as “a person who showed disdain towards authority and the U.S. Navy.” The report further noted that “the morale and behavior of sailors who had aspired to become a SEAL, and then find themselves serving in a more traditional role on a Navy ship, are frequently very challenging.”

Seaman Mays was assigned to the Bonhomme Richard’s Deck Division, which is responsible for maintaining the physical condition of the ship — a job often involving manual labor such as removing rust and painting.

The warship was undergoing an extended maintenance period and was moored when the blaze broke out on a Sunday morning, when fewer than 200 sailors were aboard. The unsealed documents said that Seaman Mays was on duty aboard the ship that day.

Navy officials deemed the 800-foot-long amphibious warship a total loss after repair estimates rose to more than $3 billion. The ship was decommissioned on April 14, and towed through the Panama Canal. It will be cut into scrap metal in Texas.

According to the N.C.I.S., a witness identified Seaman Mays as the only person who entered a vehicle storage area deep within the ship the morning of the fire, shortly before smoke was seen rising from that compartment. The report said that he may have left the storage area through an escape trunk and returned to his berthing area. A second sailor recalled Seaman Mays coming into the berthing area to “tell everyone to get off the ship because the ship was on fire.”

Seaman Mays filled out a questionnaire for investigators eight days after the fire broke out, and was the only member of the crew aboard the ship on July 12, 2020, who reported smelling a “burning fuel/rubbery smell” from the fire, the documents said. Investigators said the terminology Seaman Mays used to describe the smell of the fire was “consistent with items and materials” that special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found in the vehicle storage compartment after the fire was extinguished.

Seaman Mays faces a preliminary hearing known as an Article 32 investigation, the results of which will either recommend he be sent to a court-martial or have the charges dismissed. The final decision on whether Seaman Mays will face trial will be made by the commander of the Navy’s Third Fleet, Vice Adm. Steve Koehler.

Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a spokesman for Third Fleet, confirmed that “Seaman Apprentice Ryan Sawyer Mays is the sailor who was charged July 29,” and said, “I have nothing further to add.”

Seamus Hughes contributed research.

Categories
Health

Royal Caribbean says 6 Covid circumstances found on board a ship; shares fall

Royal Caribbean says 6 Covid cases discovered on board a ship; shares fall

In an aerial view, the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas (L) prepares to set sail from Port Miami during the first U.S. trial cruise testing COVID-19 protocols on June 20, 2021 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Royal Caribbean Cruises shares fell about 4% on Friday after six passengers on board its Adventure of the Seas ship tested positive for Covid-19.

The four of those guests were fully vaccinated and not traveling together. The cases were discovered during routine testing.

Three of the four fully-vaccinated passengers had no symptoms and the fourth passenger had mild symptoms, Royal Caribbean said in a statement. The two unvaccinated guests are minors traveling in the same party and are asymptomatic.

The six guests were immediately quarantined and their close contacts were identified and tested. They all tested negative, Royal Caribbean said.

“Each guest and their immediate travel parties are disembarking in Freeport, The Bahamas today, and separately traveling home via private transportation,” the cruise operator said.

When the cruise departed on Saturday from Nassau in the Bahamas, the guests were required to show proof of a negative PCR test. Unvaccinated minors were also required to take another test at check-in. Everyone had tested negative prior to boarding, according to a spokesperson for the company.

Due to the rapidly spreading delta coronavirus variant, the cruise line will be expanding its test procedures for cruises departing from the U.S. that are five nights or longer. Passengers will be required to have a negative test before they board ships, said CEO Michael Bayley in a Facebook post. He added, the tests can be taken within 3 days of embarkation. The new policy will be in place from July 31 to Aug. 31.

“Even with the vast majority of our onboard population highly vaccinated we are seeing more covid positive cases with vaccinated guests,” Bayley said, in the post. “The Delta variant is now spreading rapidly with over 92,000 new infections yesterday alone in the USA and in Florida one of the industry’s major markets there were over 17,000 cases yesterday.”

“We realize this will not make many guests happy just as it will comfort many guests. We are trying our very best to provide a safe and healthy and fun vacation for all our guests our crew and the communities we visit during these challenging times,” Bayley said.

The stock closed down 3.9% at $76.87. Shares are up nearly 3% since the start of the year, bringing the company’s market value to $19.57 billion.

Categories
Business

Sri Lanka, Going through ‘Worst’ Marine Catastrophe, Investigates Cargo Ship Fireplace

Sri Lanka, Facing ‘Worst’ Marine Disaster, Investigates Cargo Ship Fire

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The authorities in Sri Lanka have opened a criminal investigation into the crew of a cargo ship laden with toxic chemicals that has been burning off the island nation’s coast for 12 days, spilling debris into the ocean and polluting the country’s beaches.

Several tons of plastic pellets that were being transported on the ship have washed ashore, and Sri Lanka’s Marine Protection Authority described the spill as “probably the worst beach pollution in our history.” Workers have been employed to scour the country’s white-sand beaches for the pellets used in the production of plastic bags and fishing has been discouraged for miles along the coast.

A spokesman for Sri Lanka’s Navy said the fire, which broke out aboard the ship, MV X-Press Pearl, on May 20, had been contained, but on Tuesday thick, black smoke was still seen rising from the burned containers on the ship’s deck.

The spokesman, Captain Indika de Silva, said the ship was carrying 1,486 containers, many of which contained so-called dangerous goods, including nitric acid, caustic soda, sodium methoxide and methane.

The ship was loaded with 350 tons of oil, and a combination of heavy fuel and marine fuel. Captain de Silva said it was “too early to say about an oil spill,” but warned that there was “still a possibility.”

“This is one of the worst marine disasters that has happened in Sri Lanka,” said Dr. Asha de Vos, a marine biologist. “Our only saving grace is that there was no oil spill. If that happens, that will be incredibly tragic.”

X-Press Feeders, the company that operated the vessel, said that a container onboard had been leaking nitric acid well before the ship entered the waters off Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped island near India.

The ship’s crew requested it be permitted to offload the leaking container at two previous stops, in India and Qatar, but were denied because the ports lacked the “specialist facilities or expertise” needed to “deal with the leaking acid,” according to X-Press Feeders.

The police have questioned the ship’s crew and sent contaminated water samples to labs for testing. Of the 25 crew members who were rescued and taken to quarantine facilities, two required treatment for injuries sustained during the evacuation and one tested positive for Covid-19, the ship’s operator said.

As the authorities seek to determine the cause of the fire, locals living along the coast near Colombo, the capital, have began a major cleanup.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” said Dinesh Wijayasinghe, 47, an employee at a hotel in the coastal town of Negombo. “When I first saw this, about three to four days ago, the beach was covered with these pellets. They looked like fish eyes.”

Mr. Wijayasinghe said Sri Lankan security personnel have collected as many as 200 bags worth of plastic pellets every day since the fire began.

“Still, more keeps washing ashore,” he said. “We are told not to go to this area. So we are keeping away.”

Dr. De Vos, the marine biologist, said the amount of plastic found on the island’s western and southern coasts was troubling

Plastic pollution, he said, can be a danger to humans and animals, including endangered species like turtles, which hatch their eggs on the beach.

“The pellets can soak and absorb the chemicals from the environment,” he said. “This is an issue because when we eat whole fish, we will also be eating these chemicals.”

Categories
Business

In Suez Canal, Caught Ship Is a Warning About Extreme Globalization

In Suez Canal, Stuck Ship Is a Warning About Excessive Globalization

[Follow our live coverage of the stuck ship in the Suez Canal.]

LONDON – The world received another warning this week of the dangers of its heavy reliance on global supply chains. When a single ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking traffic in both directions, international trade was faced with a monumental traffic jam with potentially dire consequences.

The restless vehicle is not just any ship. The Ever Given is one of the largest container ships in the world with space for 20,000 metal boxes that transport goods across the sea. And the Suez Canal is not just any waterway. It is an important conduit connecting the factories in Asia with wealthy customers in Europe, as well as an important conduit for oil.

The fact that a mishap could wreak havoc from Los Angeles to Rotterdam to Shanghai underscored the extent to which modern commerce revolves around truly global supply chains.

In the past few decades, management experts and consulting firms have advocated just-in-time manufacturing to limit costs and increase profits. Instead of wasting money stocking up extra goods, companies can rely on the magic of the internet and the global shipping industry to conjure up what they need, when they need it.

The adoption of this idea has brought nothing less than a revolution to major industries – automotive and medical device manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals, and more. It has also brought a bonanza for executives and other shareholders: money that is not spent on filling warehouses with unneeded auto parts is, at least in part, money that can be given to shareholders in the form of dividends.

However, as in everything in life, overdoing a good cause can be dangerous.

Over-reliance on just-in-time manufacturing explains how medical workers from Indiana to Italy cared for Covid-19 patients without proper protective gear like masks and robes during the first wave of the pandemic.

Health systems – many under the control of profitable companies accountable to shareholders – believed they could rely on the internet and the global shipping industry to deliver what they need in real time. That was a fatal miscalculation.

That same dependency explains why Amazon failed to provide adequate supplies of masks and gloves to its warehouse workers in the US during the first few months of the pandemic.

“We have placed orders for millions of face masks that we want to give to our employees and contractors who cannot work from home, but very few of those orders have been fulfilled,” said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in a letter to all employees last March. “Masks are still in short supply worldwide.”

For years, some experts have warned that short-term shareholder interests have dwarfed prudent management by making companies save on stockpiling.

“The more we become interdependent, the more exposed we are to the fragility that arises, which is always unpredictable,” said Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalization at Oxford University. “Nobody could predict that a ship would go aground in the middle of the canal, like nobody predicted where the pandemic would come from. Just like we can’t predict the next cyber attack or the next financial crisis, but we know it will happen. “

The catastrophe of the moment when engineers are working to extract a huge ship from the Suez Canal has more than 100 ships bogged down at both ends, waiting for a clear passage. Some carry oil – one reason energy prices rose on Wednesday even though they pulled back on Thursday. Some wear electronics, clothing, and exercise equipment.

None of them get where they should go until the traditional ship is freed. The stalemate holds up $ 9.6 billion worth of goods every day, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Since its use in the 1950s, the shipping container itself has revolutionized world trade. As a standard size container that can be quickly relocated on rails and trucks, it has significantly reduced the time it takes to move goods from one location to another.

Exponential increases in the number of containers that can be stacked on a single ship have effectively continued to shrink the globe. According to Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty, a marine insurance company, capacity has increased 1,500 percent over the past half century and nearly doubled in the last decade alone.

These advances in commerce have resulted in sophisticated and highly efficient forms of specialization, with car factories in the north of England relying on parts from across Europe and Asia. The rise of the container ship has increased the availability of consumer goods and lowered prices.

However, the same advances have created weaknesses, and the disruption on the Suez Canal – the passage for about a tenth of world trade – has exacerbated the strain on the shipping industry, which has been overwhelmed by the pandemic and its reorganization of world trade.

As the Americans struggled with bans, they ordered large quantities of factory goods from Asia: exercise bikes to make up for gym closures; Printers and computer monitors to turn bedrooms into offices; Baking utensils and toys for the entertainment of children cooped up at home.

The surge in orders has exhausted the supply of containers in ports in China. The cost of shipping a container from Asia to North America has more than doubled since November. And in ports from Los Angeles to Seattle, unloading of these containers has been slowed as dockers and truck drivers were hit by Covid-19 or forced to stay home to look after children who are out of school.

Delays in unloading delays in loading the next shipment. Agricultural exporters in the American Midwest are struggling to secure containers for shipping soybeans and grains to food processors and animal feed suppliers in Southeast Asia.

This situation has persisted for four months and has shown few signs of relaxation. North American retailers have been feverishly replenishing depleted inventories and straining shipping lines on transpacific routes during the normally weak season.

The blockage of the Suez Canal effectively removes more containers from traffic. The question is how long will that take.

Christian Roeloffs, CEO of xChange, a shipping consultant in Hamburg, estimated that two weeks could strain up to a quarter of the container supply in European ports.

“Given the current shortage of containers, only the processing time for the ships is increased,” said Roeloffs.

According to Sea-Intelligence, a research company in Copenhagen, three quarters of all container ships sailing from Asia to Europe arrived at the end of February. Even a few days of disturbance in Suez could exacerbate this situation.

If the Suez stayed clogged for more than a few days, the stakes would go up dramatically. Ships now stuck in the canal will find it difficult to turn around and pursue other routes due to the narrowness of the canal.

Those now on their way to Suez can choose to head south and navigate Africa, adding weeks to their travels and burning extra fuel – costs that will ultimately be borne by consumers.

Whenever ships pass through the Channel again, they are likely to arrive at busy ports all of a sudden, forcing many to wait before they can unload – an added delay.

“This could make a really bad crisis worse,” said Alan Murphy, founder of Sea-Intelligence.

Categories
World News

‘A Very Huge Downside.’ Large Ship within the Suez Stays Caught.

‘A Very Big Problem.’ Giant Ship in the Suez Remains Stuck.

MANSHIYET RUGOLA, Egypt – The gigantic container ship that blocked world trade by getting stuck in the Suez Canal has been enthroning Umm Gaafar’s dusty brick house for five days, humming its deep mechanical hum.

She looked up from her place on the bumpy dirt road and wondered what the ship, the Ever Given, could carry in all these containers. Flat screen TV? Full size refrigerators, washing machines, or full size ceiling fans? Neither she nor her neighbors in Manshiyet Rugola Village of 5,000 had any of them at home.

“Why don’t you pull out one of these containers?” joked Umm Gaafar, 65. “There could be something good in there. Maybe it could feed the city. “

Japanese-owned Ever Given and the more than 300 cargo ships now waiting to cross the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes, could serve Manshiyet Rugola many times over.

The ships were supposed to carry cars, oil, cattle, laptops, jet fuel, scrap metal, grain, sweaters, sneakers, household appliances, toilet paper, toys, medical equipment, and more, and supply much of the world, and the canal should be their fastest route from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and the east coast of the United States.

Canal authorities said Saturday that the dredgers managed to dig up the ship’s stern and free its rudder on Friday evening and that they dredged 18 meters into the east bank of the canal on Saturday afternoon, where the ship’s bow was stuck. After a recovery team failed again to remove the four-football-field Leviathan from the sandbar it ran aground on Tuesday and blocked all shipping traffic through the canal, global supply chains were nearing a full-blown crisis.

According to estimates by shipping analysts, the colossal traffic jam kept almost $ 10 billion in trade every day.

“All of the world’s retail trade is in containers, or 90 percent,” said Alan Murphy, founder of Sea-Intelligence, a marine data and analytics company. “So everything is affected. Give a brand name and they’ll get stuck on one of these ships. “

The elimination of the bottleneck depends on the ability of the salvage forces to clear the sand, mud and rocks in which the Ever Given is stuck, and to lighten the ship’s load enough to make it float again while tugs try to push and pull it out. Your best chance could come on Monday, when a spring tide raises the canal’s water level by up to 18 inches, analysts and shipping agents said.

The company that oversees the operation and crew of the ship, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said 11 tugs helped, with two more due on Sunday. Several dredgers, including a special suction dredger that can move 2,000 cubic meters of material per hour, dug around the bow of the ship, the company said.

On the deck of a tug, on which the Egyptian authorities were able to give journalists a glimpse of the rescue operation for the first time on Saturday evening, several boats could be seen that barely reached halfway to the side of the ship and were brought up to the ship to make it stable hold. The dredger and heavy equipment were floodlit like toys on the bow of the ship.

A mighty tug sat near the stern of the ship, waiting for the next attempt to swim again. But the tide, predicted just after 10:30 p.m., came and went with no progress.

Much of the work, however, was invisible. The team of eight Dutch salvage experts and naval architects who oversee operations will have to monitor the ship and the seabed and create a computer model that will help circumnavigate the ship without damaging it, said Captain Nick Sloane, a South African salvage master with the Operation directed to repair the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that capsized off the coast of Italy in 2012.

They have to evacuate other ships from the area, a massive coordination effort. And they need to consider the possibility that the Ever Given’s grounding has rearranged the seabed, making it difficult for other ships to traverse the area even after the move, said Captain Paul Foran, a naval advisor who has worked on other salvage operations.

Meanwhile, they have to hope that the Ever Given stays intact. With the ship sagging in the middle and the bow and stern trapped in positions it wasn’t designed for, the hull is prone to stress and cracking, both experts said.

Mohammed Mosselhy, the owner of First Suez International, a maritime logistics company on the canal, said diving teams had already inspected the hull and found no damage. But on most of the other points Ever Given Murphy’s law had succumbed: anything that could go wrong, starting with the size of the ship, was among the largest in the world.

“It was the largest ship in the convoy, and she landed in the worst part of the canal” – a narrow stretch with only one lane, said Captain Sloane. “And that was just very unfortunate.”

When the tugs, dredgers, and pumps can’t do their job, a number of specialized vessels and machinery could be added that may require hundreds of workers: small tankers that suck up the ship’s fuel; the tallest cranes in the world to unload some of their containers one at a time; and when no cranes are big enough or close enough, high-performance helicopters that can take containers of up to 20 tons – although no one has said where the cargo would go. (A full 40-foot container can weigh up to 40 tons.)

Lieutenant General Osama Rabie, the head of the Suez Canal Authority, told a press conference Saturday that although he hoped “we don’t get to this stage,” the authorities would call ships in with cranes to move some of the containers.

Although canal authorities and analysts were optimistic that the canal would be cleared that weekend, Captain Sloane estimated the operation would take at least a week. When a ship of similar size, the CSCL Indian Ocean, ran aground near the port of Hamburg in 2016, it took almost six days to evacuate the Elbe.

All of this, to put it simply, “This is a very large ship; This is a very big problem, ”said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, a London-based maritime intelligence publication. “I don’t think they have everything they need. It’s just a matter of, it’s a very big problem. “

If the ship clears by Monday, the shipping industry can absorb the inconvenience, analysts said, but beyond that, supply chains and consumers could start to see major disruptions.

Some ships have already decided not to wait and get out of Suez to make the long trip around the southern tip of Africa. This trip could add weeks to the trip and cost more than $ 26,000 per additional day in fuel costs.

On Saturday, General Rabie defended the canal’s safety record: 18,840 ships in 2020, no accidents.

“What happened is happening all over the world and it will happen again,” he said. “The Suez Canal as a passage has nothing to do with the incident.”

In Manshiyet Rugola, whose name means “Little Village of Manhood”, traffic jams of any kind are difficult to imagine in normal times.

Donkey carts piled high with clover that had bumped along half-paved alleys between low brick houses and green fields with palm trees, rubbish, and animal dung. A teenager got ice cream off his motorcycle. Roosters offered the midday call to prayer a profane competition. Until the Ever Given appeared, the minarets of the inconspicuous mosques were the tallest structures.

“Do you want to see the ship?” A young boy asked two visiting journalists who were rocking in excitement under the window of their car. Ever since the earthquake-like rumble of the aground ship shook many people up on Tuesday at 7 a.m., the Ever Given was the only topic in town.

“The whole village was out there watching,” said Youssef Ghareeb, 19, a factory worker. “We got so used to having them with us because we lived on our rooftops and only watched the ship for four days.”

It was generally accepted that the view was even better at night when the ship was glowing with light: a skyscraper straight out of a big city skyline on its side.

“When it lights up at night, it’s like the Titanic,” said Nadia, who, like her neighbor Umm Gaafar, refused to give her full name because of the security forces in the area. “The only thing missing is the necklace from the movie.”

Umm Gaafar had asked to use her nickname so as not to run counter to government security guards who had got through. Nadia said she was too intimidated to take photos of the ship at night when she really wanted to.

Villagers and marine analysts had the same question about Ever Given when based on different expertise. The ship’s operators have insisted that the ship ran aground due to the strong winds of a sandstorm, with the stacked containers acting like a giant sail and other ships in the same convoy passing through without incident. So had previous ships in previous storms, the villagers insisted.

“We saw worse winds,” said Ahmad al-Sayed, 19, a security guard, “but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Two Suez Canal pilots usually board large ships crossing the canal to guide them through the canal despite being piloted by a crew member, said Captain Foran, the maritime advisor.

Shipping experts and government officials said the wind could well have been a factor exacerbating other physical forces, but they suggested that human error could have come into play.

“A major incident like this is usually the result of many reasons: the weather was a cause, but maybe there was a technical error or a human error,” General Rabie said on Saturday.

Captain Foran had the same idea.

“I wonder why it was the only one that went aground?” he said. “But you can talk about that later. For now, all they have to do is get the beast out of the sewer. “

Nada Rashwan contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Business

Satellite tv for pc photos of ship Ever Given in Suez Canal exhibits work underway

Satellite images of ship Ever Given in Suez Canal shows work underway

Satellite imagery offers a unique perspective of the stalled ship Ever Given as the crews work to free the mega container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for four days.

Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-2 satellite captured high-resolution images on Friday morning and viewed the dredging work to free the ship up close. Ever Given, which is operated by the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine, has been stuck since Tuesday when the ship ran aground in strong winds and poor visibility of a sand storm.

Shipping companies warn that it may take weeks for the Ever Given to be released. The enormous carrier is over 1,300 feet long and approximately 193 feet wide. It weighs more than 200,000 tons. One end of the ship is wedged into one side of the canal and the other extends almost to the other bank.

The ship blocks the Suez Canal completely, through which, according to the Suez Canal Authority, an average of 52 ships per day pass.

The channel handles around 12% of the world’s ocean trade, with each day of the blockade disrupting more than $ 9 billion in goods – meaning every hour of delay an estimated $ 400 million in trade, according to data company Lloyd’s List. Dollar complies.

Images captured by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite showed that shipping traffic in the Gulf of Suez was declining. According to estimates by the research company StoneX, more than 150 ships are currently waiting for the Ever Given to be released.

The images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite on March 21st and 25th offer a direct comparison of shipping traffic in the Gulf of Suez.

European space agency

The ships continue to wait as the diversion around the southern tip of Africa significantly extends a journey. For example, sailing from the Suez Canal to Amsterdam takes about 13 days when traveling at 12 knots compared to 41 days when traveling around the African Cape of Good Hope.

The satellite images from Planet Labs gave another view of the transportation building in the Gulf.

Planet Labs satellite image showing that shipping has stopped because the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the canal (top left).

Source: Planet Labs

A synthetic aperture radar image captured by a Capella satellite on the evening of March 25 shows the Ever Given ship surrounded by auxiliary boats in the Suez Canal.

Capella Space

An image from an Airbus Pleiades satellite gives a different angle of the ship as the “off nadir” view provides a more three-dimensional perspective of the Ever Given situation.

A satellite image shows the stranded container ship Ever Given after it ran aground in the Suez Canal in Egypt on March 25, 2021.

CNES Airbus DS | Reuters

Categories
Business

What to Know In regards to the Suez Canal — and How a Ship Obtained Caught There

What to Know About the Suez Canal — and How a Ship Got Stuck There

The 120 mile long man-made waterway known as the Suez Canal has been a potential focal point for geopolitical conflict since it opened in 1869. Now the canal, an important international shipping passage, is in the news for another reason: a quarter of the mile-long Japanese-owned container ship en route from China to Europe has landed in the canal for days. It blocks more than 100 ships and makes the world of maritime trade tremble.

Here are some basics about the history of the canal, how it works, how the ship got stuck, and what it means.

The canal is located in Egypt and connects Port Said on the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via the southern Egyptian city of Suez on the Red Sea. The passage enables more direct shipping between Europe and Asia, so that Africa no longer has to be circumnavigated and travel times have to be shortened by days or weeks.

The canal is the longest in the world without locks that connect bodies of water at different heights. According to a description of the channel by GlobalSecurity.org, end-to-end transit time averages 13-15 hours as there are no locks to disrupt traffic.

Originally owned by French investors, the canal was conceived when Egypt was under the control of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century. Construction on the end of Port Said began in early 1859, the excavation lasted 10 years, and the project required an estimated 1.5 million workers.

According to the Suez Canal Authority, the Egyptian government agency that operates the waterway, 20,000 farmers have been drafted every 10 months to support the construction of the project with “excruciating and poorly compensated workers”. Many workers died of cholera and other diseases.

The political turmoil in Egypt against the colonial powers of Great Britain and France slowed progress on the canal, and the final cost was roughly double the originally projected $ 50 million.

The British powers, which controlled the canal during the first two world wars, withdrew their forces there in 1956 after years of negotiations with Egypt, effectively handing over authority to the Egyptian government, led by President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The crisis started in 1956 when the Egyptian President nationalized the canal after the British left. He took further steps which Israel and its Western allies identified as a security threat and which resulted in military intervention by the Israeli, British and French forces.

The crisis briefly closed the canal, increasing the risk of embroiling the Soviet Union and the United States. It ended in early 1957 under a United Nations-monitored agreement that sent its first peacekeeping force to the region. The result was viewed as a triumph for Egyptian nationalism, but its legacy was an undercurrent in the Cold War.

The Suez Crisis was also an issue in Season 2, Episode 1 of The Crown, the acclaimed Netflix series about the kings of Britain, when then British Prime Minister Anthony Eden pondered how to react.

Egypt closed the Canal for nearly a decade after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when the waterway was basically a front line between Israeli and Egyptian forces. Fourteen cargo ships, known as the “Yellow Fleet”, were locked in the canal until it was reopened in 1975 by Nasser’s successor, Anwar el-Sadat.

Some accidental groundings by ships have since closed the canal. Most notable up to this week was a three-day shutdown in 2004 when a Russian oil tanker ran aground.

The stranded ship Ever Given, operated by the Evergreen Shipping Line, is one of the largest container ships in the world, about as long as the Empire State Building.

Although the canal was originally designed for much smaller ships, its canals have been widened and deepened several times, most recently six years ago at a cost of more than $ 8 billion.

It is believed that poor visibility and high winds, which made the Ever Given’s stacked containers look like sails, have drifted off course and led to its grounding.

The salvage forces tried a number of remedial measures: pulling it with tugs, dredging it under the hull and using a front loader to dig the eastern dam where the bow is attached. But the size and weight of the ship, 200,000 tons, had frustrated the rescue workers from Thursday evening.

Some marine rescue experts have said that nature could succeed where tugs and dredges have failed. A seasonal high tide on Sunday or Monday could give the canal about 18 inches deep and potentially float the ship.

This depends on how long the canal is closed, which is believed to handle about 10 percent of the world’s maritime traffic. TradeWinds, a maritime industry news publication, said that with more than 100 ships waiting to cross the canal, that backlog could take more than a week to clear.

A prolonged closure could be very expensive for owners of ships waiting to cross the canal. Some might decide to reduce their losses and reroute their ships in Africa.

The owner of Ever Given is already facing millions of dollars in insurance claims and the cost of emergency services. The Egyptian government, which generated $ 5.61 billion in revenue from canal fees in 2020, also has a vital interest in getting the Ever Given going again and reopening the waterway.

Categories
World News

Suez Canal cargo ship blockage might trigger issues for the globe

Suez Canal cargo ship blockage could cause problems for the globe

The stranded container ship Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, was seen aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on March 25, 2021.

Suez Canal Authority | Reuters

The gigantic cargo ship that is stuck in the Suez Canal and blocking traffic at one of the most important choke points for sea trade in the world is not yet ready to break free.

The Ever Given, a 220,000-ton mega-ship with a capacity of almost a quarter mile and a capacity of 20,000 containers, ran aground after being blown by strong winds as it entered Egypt’s Suez Canal from the Red Sea. The passage, which is home to up to 12% of the world’s maritime trade and through which 50 container ships normally pass per day, is completely blocked.

Tugs and dredgers are currently working on removing the ship, which has been stalled since Tuesday evening. But the operation could take weeks, one of the executives involved warned.

“Although we believe and hope that the situation will improve shortly, there is a risk that the ship will break,” JP Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic wrote in a note on Thursday. “In this scenario, the channel would be blocked for an extended period of time, which could lead to significant disruptions in world trade, skyrocketing shipping rates, a further surge in energy resources and an increase in global inflation.”

The crisis is another blow to the global supply chain after a brutal year of delays, bottlenecks and price pressures due to the coronavirus pandemic.

What does this mean for world trade?

The shipping delays can affect everything from clothes and shoes you ordered online to fitness equipment, electronics, groceries, and power supplies – which means gas prices could go up too.

“The blocking of containers in the Suez Canal to further shake global supply chains and raise prices in the face of pent-up demand,” said JPMorgan analysts in a research report on Thursday.

The artificial Suez is 120 miles long and an important transit point between east and west. And the 20,000 ships that pass annually transport everything from oil and gas to machine parts and consumer goods.

While it is still early to say how the full impact of the tanker crisis will play out, the bank anticipates that in the near future, the blockade will likely add to the supply strains in the industry, already caused by ongoing supply chain bottlenecks the form of congestion in the port and the lack of ships and containers due to Covid-19 are hindered.

Ships have to divert to completely different routes, “which will lead to longer journey times and further delays,” wrote JPMorgan.

And those delays could be more than 15 days for many ships, the alternative of which is to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa, which analysts say would increase shipping times by up to 30%.

“The immediate effects of delays in the canal will focus on Euro-Asian trade, delaying the already disrupted supply chains affecting the supply of oil and refined products,” ING senior economist Joanna Konings wrote in a Wednesday Customer notification.

Effects on Crude Oil Prices

The Ever Given disaster is already having an impact on oil prices.

The news of the Suez Blockade attracted buyers and, along with other economic data, helped the one-month futures contract on the international benchmark Brent Crude Oil “posted its largest one-day gain in nearly a year,” according to Arctic Securities on Wednesday $ 64.41 closed “although it lost some of those gains through Thursday.

Meanwhile, between 5% and 10% of all marine oil is transported through the Suez, which means that for every day the ship gets stuck, another 3 to 5 million barrels of oil per day will be delayed. Several tankers carrying jet fuel and gas oil are also being held up on the route between the Persian Gulf and Europe, as well as empty tankers crossing to pick up North Sea oil, S & P Platts reported on Thursday.

A graphic that halts shipping around the Suez Canal after the Ever Given ship got stuck in the canal.

Source: MarineTraffic

The canal is also a transit point for around 8% of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a prolonged interruption could disrupt flows mainly to the European market.

Any price effect is likely to be brief, however, says Peter Sutherland, president of Houston-based energy investment firm Henrietta Resources LLC.

“It won’t have a lasting impact on prices, but it will help provide support in the run-up to the OPEC + meeting,” Sutherland told CNBC.

“The risk premium in the oil markets will likely be short-lived, but channel support has still managed to change the market narrative.”

The winners

The canal blockade is certainly not bad news for everyone – the spot freight rates will continue to rise due to the pent-up demand and make money for the operators, say market observers.

“A prolonged closure of the Suez Canal would see container shipping as the greatest beneficiary, while tankers, dry matter and air freight may also have higher rates,” wrote JPMorgan, describing the tightening of shipping rates as an “upside risk”.

Satellite images of the container ship Ever Given are stuck in the Egyptian Suez Canal.

Source: European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 Satellite

Who will benefit most from it? JP Morgan highlights Asian liners, saying they expect higher spot freight rates despite higher bunker costs due to longer rerouted trips and increasing congestion. “In our view, it is expected that this will have a positive impact on the bottom line of the Asian lines rather than hurting profitability,” the bank wrote.

Bank of America analysts agree. “A Suez closure of a few weeks would be very positive for spot freight rates – by effectively reducing supply by increasing the sailing distance over the Cape of Good Hope by 20-30%,” she wrote in her note on Thursday.

Risks and weak points grow

Meanwhile, the Suez Canal blockade will “add to an already rising risk premium for oil and refined products in the Middle East,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt, chief MENA analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, highlighting the increased risk of oil rig attacks amid regional tensions emerged.

The uncertainty about the length of the blockade “creates a window of opportunity for state and non-state actors to try to maximize the impact of attacks on tankers and energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea,” he warned.

Cargo ship “Ever Given” is stuck and blocking traffic in the Suez Canal

Source: Reuters

Most analysts expect the situation to improve within the week. “However, the disorder could be prolonged if complications or torso damage occurs,” Bank of America wrote on Thursday. If the traffic is cleared at some point, the ships arrive at their ports behind schedule, causing further congestion.

Nevertheless, the bank writes: “A blockade of a few days would be largely manageable for container shipping – possibly associated with additional fuel costs, as the shipping companies accelerate their services to make up for lost time.”

The whole fiasco underscores the fragility of the trading network that the world really relies on, Sutherland says.

“Coupled with the recent attacks on Saudi assets, it is a reminder of the many vulnerabilities in the global oil and gas supply chain.”

Categories
Business

Suez Canal Blocked After Container Ship Will get Caught

Suez Canal Blocked After Container Ship Gets Stuck

CAIRO – A giant container ship got stuck crossing the Suez Canal late Tuesday, blocking traffic through one of the world’s major shipping lanes as tugs struggled to free it.

It was unclear what impact the blockade could have on global shipping through the canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and carries around 10 percent of global shipping.

Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, the head of the agency overseeing the Suez Canal, said the agency is reopening an older section of the canal to allow ships to navigate the waterway again.

“The Suez Canal will spare no effort to restore shipping and serve the movement of world trade,” he said in a statement, adding that rescue units and eight tugs continued to try to get the stuck ship afloat on Wednesday morning.

The ship, which was sailing from China to the Dutch port of Rotterdam, ran aground in poor visibility and strong winds from a sandstorm that hit much of northern Egypt this week, according to George Safwat, a spokesman for the canal authority.

The storm caused an “inability to steer the ship,” he said in a statement.

Pictures from the canal showed the container-laden ship – the Ever Given, which is nearly a quarter mile long – sitting sideways across the canal at such an angle that the name of the company that owns it, Evergreen, is clearly legible on the ship behind. Its bow seemed to be stuck on the rocky east bank of the canal.

“The ship in front of us ran aground when we drove through the canal and is now stuck on the side,” wrote an Instagram user named @fallenhearts17 on Tuesday evening. “Looks like we might be here a little …”

A living navigator showed a group of other ships blocking the canal behind the Ever Given while they waited for them to move. When, according to the pursuer, the ship suddenly turned sideways, several tugs rushed to rescue him, without success.

Categories
Health

Pfizer Will Ship Fewer Covid-19 Vaccine Vials to Account for ‘Additional’ Doses

Pfizer Will Ship Fewer Vaccine Vials to Account for ‘Extra’ Doses

However, the federal health authorities that manage the government’s syringe contracts told the FDA that more than 70 percent of the sites are using more efficient syringes and that more syringes can be bought or made according to another person who is aware of the situation.

Still, Pfizer’s attempts to pressurize the FDA worried some health officials, especially since the company itself originally calculated the vials contained five doses. If an extra dose could be extracted, it would mean the vaccine supply could be stretched, protecting more Americans from the virus. On the other hand, too few specialty syringes would mean the government could pay for wasted doses.

In early January, the debate was resolved after a “standard and customary legal review process,” said an FDA spokeswoman. On January 6, in a change to the emergency approval, the FDA officially changed the vaccine datasheet to specify six doses.

“Syringes and / or needles with low dead volume can be used to extract six doses from a single vial,” says the new US bulletin. It also warned, “If standard syringes and needles are used, there may not be enough volume to extract a sixth dose from a single vial.”

In a statement, an FDA spokeswoman said the agency considered several factors in approving Pfizer’s request, including the availability of the specialty syringes, the fact that other health officials had made a similar decision, and that the change would vaccinate Americans faster.

Pfizer and the federal government have agreed to keep track of which locations receive the syringes and other equipment needed to extract the extra dose, and that the company will not bill the US for six doses per vial for locations without these devices. According to a person familiar with the negotiations who was not allowed to speak because the conversations are confidential.

Beginning next week, the number of Pfizer vaccines the federal government will allocate to each state could be based on the assumption that each vial contains six doses, according to a federal official with no legal capacity to discuss the matter. The CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services did not discuss when they could do the shift until Friday afternoon.