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Shipping resumes in Suez Canal

EGYPT SHIPPING is on the move again in the Suez is the shortest maritime trade route between
Canal, following the refloating of the Evergreen, Europe and Asia. It handles about 12% of global
the giant 224,000-tonne container ship that ran commerce, and together with the associated
aground on March 23, blocking passage through SUMED pipeline system, it also handles a sub-
the vital waterway for six days. stantial portion of the seaborne oil and gas trade
The ship was reportedly blown off course by – almost 10% of total oil shipments and 8% of
a sandstorm in the southernmost stretch of the LNG shipments in 2018.
canal, close to the city of Suez. Egypt’s Suez Canal “The Suez Canal is one the world’s busiest
Authority (SCA) responded quickly, mobilising trade routes, and this blockage is having great
its full resources and dispatching eight tugboats implications on global trade, including LNG,
to the site where the Panama-flagged Evergreen, as shipments to Europe from one of the world’s
owned by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, was largest LNG producers – Qatar – essentially all
sitting astride the waterway in a horizontal posi- pass through there,” commented Rystad Ener-
tion and blocking traffic. gy’s head of gas and power markets, Carlos Tor-
Later, expert rescue teams from the Neth- res Diaz, in a note. “The canal is the main route
erlands were dispatched to help the Suez Canal for LNG cargoes heading from the Middle East
Authority (SCA) refloat the vessel. Refloatation to Europe and for some cargoes heading from
efforts were initially expected to take two days, the Mediterranean to Asia. During 2020, close
but they did not succeed until March 29. to 260 LNG cargoes were sent from Qatar to
Once the canal was cleared, SCA took emer- Europe via the Suez Canal, or an average of five
gency measures to permit it to operate around per week.” ™
the clock. The waterway is typically closed from
dusk to dawn for security reasons, but SCA’s goal
was to clear the way for the passage of over 300
commercial ships that had backed up at either
end of the canal during the six-day closure.
Maersk (Denmark), the world’s largest ship-
ping company, estimates it may take six days or
more for the queue of backlogged vessels to clear
and for navigation to resume at its normal rate.
The incident has raised both domestic and
international concerns. With about 50 vessels
passing through the canal each day, SCA is a
key foreign currency earner for the Egyptian
economy. In 2020 alone, it brought in $5.6bn in
revenues for the treasury. Nevertheless, Egypt’s
balance of payments is not expected to experi-
ence any significant disruption as a result of the
Suez Canal blockage, Moody’s said in a note this
week.
From a global perspective, the waterway Passage through the canal was blocked for six days (Photo: SCA)

Uganda delays launch of EACOP, Tilenga

projects following Magufuli’s death

UGANDA UGANDA has pushed the start date for devel- of Uganda (PAU) explained in a statement pub-
opment of the Tilenga oilfield and construction lished last week that the launch date had been
of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) postponed, owing to the “very sad and untimely
back to April. demise” of Tanzanian President John Magufuli
France’s Total and its partners had had been on March 17.
scheduled to begin work on both projects on The statement did not say exactly when the
March 22. However, the Petroleum Authority parties might proceed.

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 13 31•March•2021