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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

251–260 of 593 posts

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

#251
post #86

What a surprise it didn’t need nuclear ordinance or building giant elaborate dams or millions of helicopters.

This comment really made me chuckle. I did enjoy reading the suggestions on the other thread, but not many were entirely... practical (edit for spelling)

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

#252

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?

If we count only missed revenues for Egypt, this incident cost them about US$100 million. Canal revenues were US$27.2 billion in the last 5 years (https://www.reuters.com/article/egypt-economy-suezcanal/egyp...) which is US$15 million in revenues per day, and the canal was closed for 7 days.

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

#254
post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

If this happened on American soil, it'd be stuck for weeks. There'd be infighting over which private contractor the canal authority will pick. And when the excavation process starts, there'd be complaining from NIMBYs because of the disruption and noise. And in the end, there'd be multiple entities all suing each other because they can.

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

#255
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair: Maersk, biggest shipping company in the world also came to the conclusion that it will take longer and sent their ships the way around africa. It's always a gamble and every outcome has it's probabilities.

that may still be the right choice given that now there is a huge backlog

Yes - just because they moved it that doesn’t mean the delays instantly clear.

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

#257
post #230

“ Oil prices remained volatile, however, amid concerns to the time it may take to clear the almost 500 ship backlog and expectations that OPEC members will hold their production cut agreement in place following their monthly meeting in Vienna later this week.” Such a perfect time for Democrats to play politics with energy. Wheee! Everyone get ready to bend over.

I mean...the largest increase, and the longest year-to-year increase of gas prices in the past 30 years happened 2002-2008, which was hardly Democrat controlled. Prior to that they were basically flat since 1990. The past two presidents saw an increase the first half of their years in office (4 years for Obama, 2 years for Trump), and a drop the last half.

Not really sure a political conclusion is warranted here.

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

#259
post #157
post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

There appears to be little "high-end engineering." Just a high tide and a bunch of tug boats.

Pretty sure I've seen a definition of engineering that was "Solve the problem by doing as little new as possible".

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

#260
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I used to think that HN was a collection of some of the smartest people on the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, there are some incredible people here. But I guess what I have learned over the past 10 years is that HN has as many blind spots as any other online forum. If you want SV advice, this is the place to be. If you want to dislodge a stuck mega ship, look elsewhere.

The smartest ones are maybe not the ones providing suggestions? Then again, it's fun to speculate, and what are these threads for if not to provoke thought? Maybe it's fine for people to imagine and try to put themselves in the place of the professionals working on the problem. You can interpret the comments here as an indicator of dangerous human hubris if you want, but I think most of the people here understand tha…

I had great fun reading about the number of helicopters and starships needed to lift the ship and probably took something away from it for future endeavours. Really great for thinking about scale.
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