No timeline to salvage ship stuck in Suez Canal

SUEZ, Egypt－A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt's Suez Canal for a fifth day on Saturday, as authorities attempted to free the vessel and reopen a crucial waterway whose blockage is disrupting global shipping and trade.

The 400-meter-long Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck in a single-lane stretch of the canal last Tuesday, about six kilometers north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez.

Osama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority, said on Saturday an investigation was continuing but did not rule out human or technical error.

Rabei said he could not predict when the ship might be dislodged. A Dutch salvage firm is attempting to refloat the vessel with tugboats and dredgers, taking advantage of high tides.

Shoei Kisen, the company that owns the vessel, said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed.

Two attempts to free the vessel failed on Saturday, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, the ship's management company, and a canal services provider, Leth Agencies, despite hopes a high tide might give the vessel a boost.

Bernhard Schulte had said earlier that "significant progress" was made late on Friday at the ship's stern where its rudder was released from sediment.

It said around a dozen tugboats were working on Saturday alongside dredging operations that were removing sand and mud from around the left side of the vessel's bow. Some 9,000 metric tons of ballast water had been already removed from the vessel.

Since the blockage began, a maritime traffic jam has grown to more than 320 vessels waiting on both ends of the Suez Canal and in the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the waterway.

Combination efforts

Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said on Friday the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides.

If that fails, the company will remove hundreds of containers from the front of the vessel to lighten it, lifting the ship to make it easier to pull free, Berdowski said.

A prolonged closure of the crucial waterway would cause delays in the global shipment chain. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, official figures showed. About 10 percent of world trade flows through the canal. The closure could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East.

Agencies via Xinhua