Egypt to dig deeper in Suez after ship stranded
Ship Ever Given
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday approved the widening and deepening of the southern part of the Suez Canal, after a stranded ship crippled the critical maritime artery for six days in March.
“What you heard today is about the upgrade in the southern stretch, where the problem (the grounded vessel) happened,” Sisi said from Ismailia, where the Suez Canal Authority is headquartered.
The major engineering enhancement “will lead to improvements in the ability of the guide (SCA) and the captain of any ship to navigate inside the canal,” said SCA head Osama Rabie, who presented the expansion plan to Sisi in a televised address.
The upgrades would stretch “from the 122-kilometer mark to the 162-kilometer mark” and would include a 10-kilometer “duplication of the canal from the 122- to the 132-kilometer mark.”
The project will last 24 months, Rabie added, with the widening extending lanes “by 40 meters to the east and deepening from 20 meters to 30 meters.”
Sisi said the work would improve the canal, “taking into account the growth of global trade.”
The 200,000-ton MV Ever Given got diagonally stuck in the narrow but crucial global trade artery in a sandstorm on March 23, triggering a mammoth six-day-long effort by Egyptian and international salvage specialists to dislodge it.
Egypt lost between US$12 million and US$15 million in revenue for each day the waterway was closed, according to SCA figures. After the vessel was freed, Sisi pledged investment to avoid any repetition of the canal closure.
The ship has since been impounded amid a compensation dispute.
A court in Ismailia last week rejected an appeal from the ship’s Japanese owners against its seizure.
