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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

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Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#501

Post by azernik »

rvp-x wrote: post #470
riverageraldo wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me question that shouldn't we have another canal built? Like if so much of the world's economy depends on this route shouldn't we build an extra canal to speed up the transportation and also act as a redundancy

Israel at some point was considering setting up a rail track between Eilat and the rest of the country. The main benefit of doing so is that cargo ships could unload and Eilat (red sea) and have cargo transported to a port in the mediterranean sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_railway_to_Eilat That plan was frozen after the Egypt-Israel peace agreement.

It's been floated after the peace treaty too; it's just unlikely to justify the massive cost, now that the strategic consideration of bypassing an Egyptian blockade is past.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#502

Post by azernik »

InitialLastName wrote: post #475
onei wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, I imagine the insurance alone would make the Persian Gulf route unviable. Pirates is one thing, but governments confiscating boats would be a huge disincentive. The other side of the Sinai is probably much more palatable even if Egypt and Israel aren't best buddies.

Not to mention the terrorism/sabotage/non-state actor destruction opportunities that route would present that are moderately prevented on the Red Sea side (if you can get past the Horn of Africa). I can't see Egypt approving an alternate canal that Israel would have any control over, but I could absolutely see Israel going in on a chance to a) take business from Egypt and b) add a defensive feature along that border.

Both a) and b) would require a real increase in tensions. Israel and Egypt have a cold peace, with several common enemies/interests; the prospect of a direct military confrontation is nil, and neither side will go out of their way to harm the other economically.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#503

Post by azernik »

InitialLastName wrote: post #408
onei wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot further to dig, but the next best thing would be to dig from the Persian gulf through Iraq, Syria and probably Lebanon. Not forgetting half the Persian Gulf is Iran. It's not exactly the most stable geopolitical area.

A quick look suggests that the Tigris is mostly navigable up to Baghdad, which would get you halfway there. As an alternative (and ignoring the obviously substantial geopolitical concerns), is there a geographic reason not to dig a canal on the other side of the Sinai from, say, Aqaba to Rafah? If you had to dig that far, it would seem to be the next best option.

The terrain along the Negev route is extremely hostile. Bypass proposals have mostly focused on rail lines from Eilat/Aqaba to the large and well-developed Israeli ports on the Mediterranean, but even constructing rail lines there is quite difficult.

An underappreciated fact of Israeli and Palestinian geography is its mountains and hills; any major transportation project [1] requires extensive tunnel and bridge work.

[1] Examples: the TLV/Jerusalem high speed rail, the Haifa highway bypass, or a proposed transportation corridor connecting the main West Bank population centers along the ridge of the Judean and Samarian mountain ranges.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#504

Post by creato »

CalChris wrote: post #390
creato wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else in one of these canal threads said that Egypt charges slightly less than it would cost to sail around Africa. If that's true, that Egypt is probably capturing around as much value as is possible from the canal.

Quite a bit less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iwOZOb90fM

That example was pretty idealized, starting and ending very close to the canal. Most voyages are probably not affected quite as starkly by the canal, and I doubt the canal can or does charge ships based on their overall itinerary.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#505

Post by Dylan16807 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #455
OscarCunningham wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason water is cheap is because it's plentiful; there's a lot of competition to supply it. But there's only one Suez canal and sailing around Africa is much worse. So you would expect Egypt to be extracting a significant portion of the value the Suez canal adds.

So… if somebody gets a monopoly on the water supply to an area, you think a price hike is reasonable? Oh, wait, water's already a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

1. We're not talking about what's reasonable, but what's expected.

2. This isn't like a monopoly on water supply, because the ships don't have to go this way. To make the analogy work you'd have to add something like "everybody already has a well, but supplying tap water is cheaper than using a well". In such a situation, a water company that's maximizing profits would charge just a little bit less than using a well, and while it would annoy people it wouldn't harm them.

3. The government stops water companies from gouging for the good of the citizens, which isn't a factor here.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#506

Post by lmilcin »

kzrdude wrote: post #498
lmilcin wrote: post #459

Now, understand all those ships will take a long time to pass the canal and then even longer time processing at their ports of destination which will also have their schedules completely disrupted. Does anybody know at what percentage of capacity the canal usually operates?

Apparently they are going to double throughput for the next few days compared to normal traffic, so they had some spare capacity.

Double throughput means it will still take about 4-5 days to clear the backlog (new ships are arriving and queuing up even as the backlog is being cleared).

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#508

Post by SkipperCat »

throwawayfire wrote: post #355
chipsambos wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree it's incalculable, I don't mean that in the "it's too big of a number" sort of way but in the "we can't possibly know" kind of way: 1) The scale and depth of the disruption makes it impractical to figure in any kind of accurate way and 2) The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals that nay spiral out themselves (butterfly effect style) e.g. some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some…

> The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals In general, temporary disruption has some long-term positive economic effects (which is directly why 'disruption' is valued in Silicon Valley). For example, during London Tube Strikes, commuters find different and more efficient routes and 5% ended up permanently changing their route on public transport: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tube-strike..…

Think of the EverGiven as global shipping's chaos monkey....

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#509

Post by maxerickson »

garaetjjte wrote: post #481
maxerickson wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seasonal variation in the tides is like 20 centimeters. The draft of the ship is more than 10 meters at the bow.

Yeah, but on ship this size 400x60x0.2=4800 tons of difference! I'm somewhat exaggerating because ship hull isn't cuboid, but it is still likely equivalent to removing around hundred containers.

Only a portion of it was grounded, not the full length of the ship.

Someone linked a BBC article stating that they shifted 27,000 cubic meters of sand, so there you go, they could likely remove a meter under the whole thing in a similar amount of time (probably longer to cover area instead of digging down, but that isn't what they would need to do).

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#510

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #505
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So… if somebody gets a monopoly on the water supply to an area, you think a price hike is reasonable? Oh, wait, water's already a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

1. We're not talking about what's reasonable, but what's expected. 2. This isn't like a monopoly on water supply, because the ships don't have to go this way. To make the analogy work you'd have to add something like "everybody already has a well, but supplying tap water is cheaper than using a well". In such a situation, a water company that's maximizing profits would charge just a little bit less than using a well,…

Everybody has access to rainwater, except the people who don't. I think the analogy works quite well re point 2 (though not point 3).
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