- The Ever Given, a container ship nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall, ran aground in the Suez Canal in Egypt.
- In an effort to avoid a repeat of the event, in mid-May, the SCA announced it had started dredging work to widen and deepen the southern part of the canal where the Ever Given was jammed.
- The 30-kilometer-long area will be widened by 40 meters (131 feet) to the east and deepened to 72 feet, up from 66 feet, according to the SCA.
A CNN news by Nell Lewis states that the Suez Canal is being widened.
The canal will be widened by 40 meters
The 30-kilometer-long area will be widened by 40 meters (131 feet) to the east and deepened to 72 feet, up from 66 feet, according to the SCA.
Plans also include extending the second lane near the Great Bitter Lake, which opened in 2015, by 10 kilometers (6 miles) — allowing two-way traffic along an 82 kilometer (51 mile) stretch.
Maximize the canal’s efficiency
The work is intended for “maximizing the canal’s efficiency and shortening the vessels’ transit time, as well as raising the navigation safety,” said a press release from the SCA. But there are still questions as to whether this will be enough to prevent future blockages.
“The widening of the canal is a smart move,” Sal Mercogliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University in North Carolina, tells CNN.
“The question that I have is if you widen the canal, then will vessel operators make their vessels bigger?”
What does shipping companies say?
Shipping companies argue that bigger ships are more efficient at carrying large volumes of cargo across the globe and — in normal conditions — they are able to pass through the Suez.
But “it’s a very narrow margin of error,” says Mercogliano. If there are strong winds — as in the case of the Ever Given — or bad visibility, ultra-large vessels risk getting stuck.
The extension proposed by the SCA will help reduce the risk of ships getting stuck, but it will not erase it, says Ioannis Theotokas, a professor in the Department of Maritime Studies at the University of Piraeus, Greece.
Maersk welcomes the extension plan
Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping line, told CNN it welcomes plans to widen and deepen the southern part of the passage.
“Increasing the stretch with double lane will enable more vessels to transit a vital canal that receives about 10% of the world trade flows. The deepening and widening will reduce the risk of groundings,” says Aslak Ross, head of HSE & Marine Standards at A.P. Moller-Maersk.
He adds that “the current vessel size matches our network demand and (the company) has no plans for transiting larger vessels than what we do today through Suez Canal.”
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Source: CNN
