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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

#541

Post by ehnto »

sellyme wrote: post #539
djhn wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We theoretically may have avoided, for the next few decades, the risk of a truly dangerous infectious disease being underestimated, something halfway between Covid and extinction-level threat.

Given the sheer quantity of idiots underestimating it right now, I'm not too sure that things will have improved a few decades down the line.

I think it's hopeful humanity would prevail a more deadly pandemic, many countries closed borders very quickly and there are island nations with understandably quick responses. Civilization as we know it could definitely still get wiped out though.

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

#542

Post by rswail »

iso1210 wrote: post #301
lisper wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a rough idea by thinking of this as if it were a natural disaster, and from that perspective I think the toll is probably not too bad. No casualties, very little property damage, and a week is not really all that long. However... that is no excuse to shrug this off. We were very, very lucky that it was only a week. The ship could easily have broken in two, which would have been a catastrophe of the first…

The canal revenues were down about $15m/day. If it really cost $7b a day, then Egypt is massively undercharging.

The cost to traverse the canal is likely to be as close as possible to the cost of the alternative routes (eg Cape of Good Hope) that Egypt can make them, while still providing the advantages of saved time and operational cost.

The cost here was for the interruption to the schedules, not the daily cost of operations normally.

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

#543

Post by rswail »

viztor wrote: post #186
JosephRedfern wrote: post #62

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

I don't think there will be any spoilage, the goods travelled through sea are never fresh.

Livestock is often/always transported by ship, and they are more than "fresh", they are still alive.

Whether that trade is humane is a separate question.

There are also containers that are maintained at a fixed temperature/humidity for transporting "fresh" items. They still have a limited transport time.

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

#544

Post by rswail »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #285
pradn wrote: post #207

A great Twitter thread with many articles/resources if you want a critical lens at the global logistics supply chain. https://twitter.com/CharmaineSChua/status/137586855212986368... I found this article on the impact on super-sized ships on logistical infrastructure useful and fascinating. It describes how the creation of ships too big to fit in the Panama canal (post-PANAMAX ships) was received by 1) Panamanians 2)…

>the hydrodynamic effects of these large ships in relatively shallow and narrow canals is underappreciated I'm really surprised I haven't seen this mentioned. A long time ago, I was trained as a merchant ship's navigation officer. One of the things we were taught (but unfortunately had few opportunities to practice), was using "bank cushion" or "bank suction" to use the hydraulic interaction between the hull and a na…

> ... not compensating for the strong cross winds.

Not compensating or not being able to compensate? One implies negligence, the other unavoidable.

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

#545

Post by rswail »

berkes wrote: post #428
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the guy at a bar who tells you he knows how to swordfight after doing fencing. I'm sure he's right but it just funny from an official with experience basically saying "it wasn't that hard."

Boskalis is the company who brought the tugboats, engineers, diggers and whatnot over there in days. This is not a random guy commenting. This is an end-boss in charge of the entire operation.

They brought over a few tugs, but the large majority were Egyptian. Not belittling Boskalis' work in the operation, but don't think that the Egyptians don't understand maritime operations in the canal.

And I'm guessing that the operation was overseen by the Suez Canal administration, not Boskalis. Not saying that there wasn't delegation, but I'm guessing a joint management operation between the canal, the ship's management, the salvage operator and the local ship captains.

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

#546

Post by ce4 »

EricE wrote: post #524
ce4 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the ship crash during high tide or low tide? The tide 6 days ago when it got stuck compared to today is more important.

What? Tide mattered more now because it had a significant impact on getting it out quickly. Luckily it wasn’t nearly as high when it beached itself - but if it had beached itself on the downslope of the peak tide instead of the upslope it very likely would still be stuck! Tide when it crashed was not nearly as significant as when it got free.

I disagree, i think you got that backwards - the tide level at the time of the beaching has surely had an effect on at what point it started plowing and was being decelerated and subsequently how far in absolute numbers evergreen went into the rim.

Imagine getting stuck during spring tide vs low tide hich is more than 2m lower and would have decelerated the ever given earlier

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

#547

Post by gbronner »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #376
distrill wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They run the canal at maximum capacity indefinitely We have to stop doing this with all of our critical systems, it causes hiccups to be so costly.

What is so critical about the Suez Canal. If it were down for a month/year. what do you think the impacts would be? Would most ship traffic simply go around Africa?

We'd have to build a lot more ships and containers and burn a lot more fuel. Consumer prices would be higher, and some products wouldn't be on shelves

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

#548

Post by andi999 »

lisper wrote: post #187
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…

You can get a rough idea by thinking of this as if it were a natural disaster, and from that perspective I think the toll is probably not too bad. No casualties, very little property damage, and a week is not really all that long. However... that is no excuse to shrug this off. We were very, very lucky that it was only a week. The ship could easily have broken in two, which would have been a catastrophe of the first…

There is no major bullet here. Nowadays the alternative route around Africa takes 10 days only.

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

#549

Post by juki »

perl4ever wrote: post #526
notyourday wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Qmax and Chinamax are higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinamax This has a rather odd diagram, and I'm not sure if it supports your comment or not. It shows Suezmax as having "unlimited length", while Chinamax is given as 360 meters, which I think is smaller than Ever Given. Obviously unlimited length can't be literal, if the Suez isn't perfectly straight, right? On the other hand the Chinamax diagram says "unlimited air draft" which again,…

Chinamax means ships that can use specific harbours, which imposes a length limit. Panamax likewise has a length limit because the ship has to fit inside the locks in the Panama Canal.

The Suez Canal doesn't have locks, so in principle the length isn't limited. In reality it of course is limited by the harbours you intend to use. Apparently ships longer than 400m also require permission from the Suez Canal Authority.

More important for the claim that Chinamax is bigger is the tonnage. Chinamax can carry 400,000 tonnes, while Suezmax is typically under 200,000 tonnes.

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

#550

Post by lisper »

andi999 wrote: post #548
lisper wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a rough idea by thinking of this as if it were a natural disaster, and from that perspective I think the toll is probably not too bad. No casualties, very little property damage, and a week is not really all that long. However... that is no excuse to shrug this off. We were very, very lucky that it was only a week. The ship could easily have broken in two, which would have been a catastrophe of the first…

There is no major bullet here. Nowadays the alternative route around Africa takes 10 days only.

10 days is not a big deal if it's just one shipment. It's a huge deal if it affects every ship that would otherwise have gone through the canal, i.e. 50 ships a day, 18,000+ ships a year. That's 180,000 extra ship-days per year. That's a pretty major bullet in an economy built on just-in-time inventory control.
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