A freighter carrying corn that had run aground on the Suez Canal was refloated on Monday and the shipping traffic in the Egyptian channel was restored, as indicated by the Suez Canal Authority.
The MV Glorywith flag of Marshall Islandssuffered a technical failure and the canal deployed four tugboats to help refloat it, said Admiral osama rabei, director of the Canal Authority. The ship was being withdrawn to a berthing area to resolve the issue.
Rabei did not elaborate on the nature of the glitch. Part of Egypt, including its northern provinces, suffered bad weather on Sunday.
Traffic in the canal was restored once the merchant was refloated and 51 vessels were expected to pass through the canal on Monday, Rabei said in a statement.
The ship ran aground around 5 a.m. local time and was raised five hours later, said Marwa Maher, a media employee at the institution that manages the canal.
The Glory had run aground near the city of Qantara, in Ismailia province, according to channel services firm Leth Agencies. Satellite location data analyzed by Associated Press they showed the Glory in a one-way stretch of the Suez Canal just south of Port Said in the Mediterranean Sea.
.video-container { overflow: hidden; position: relative; width:100%; } .video-container::after { padding-top: 56.25%; display: block; content: ”; } .video-container iframe { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
Leth Agencies published a graphic suggesting that the vessel owned by the Greek firm Primera Shipping Inc. was against the west side of the canal, heading south and not across the channel.
The Glory was not the first ship to be stranded in the crucial channel. The Ever Givena huge Panama-flagged container ship, crashed into the shore of a one-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021 and blocked the road for six days.
The Ever Given was released in a huge rescue operation by a fleet of tugboats. The blockade created a massive traffic jam that paralyzed $9 billion a day in global trade and increased pressure on some supply chains already hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
This debacle caused the Egyptian authorities to begin widen and dredge the southern section of the canalwhere the ship was stranded.
The oil tanker with the flag of Singapore Affinity V it was stranded in August in a one-way stretch of canal, blocking traffic for five hours before it was released.
According to the records of the Joint Coordination Center, the Glory was carrying some 65,000 tons of corn from the Ukraine bound for China.
The glory, a 225-meter (738-foot) vessel, was inspected by the Joint Coordination Center near Istanbul on January 3. The center, which oversees Ukrainian agricultural exports under an international agreement, includes Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and United Nations personnel.
The Suez Canalopened in 1869, offers a crucial connection for the transportation of goods, oil and natural gas. It also remains one of the main sources of foreign exchange for Egypt. The government of President Abdul Fata el Sisi completed a major expansion of the canal in 2015 to accommodate the world’s largest ships.
(With information from AP)
Keep reading:
9 keys to understanding why the Suez Canal is so important and how a prolonged closure could shake the world economy
Source-www.infobae.com