” He is free “, welcomed, Monday, March 29, in a statement Evergreen, the owner of the giant container ship Ever Given which, failed, blocked the Suez Canal for six days.
During the refloating operation, 30,000 cubic meters of sand were dredged and thirteen tugs were deployed. A costly accident – each day of blockage would have cost between 6 billion and 10 billion dollars (between 5.1 billion and 8.5 billion euros), according to the insurer Allianz – which highlighted the weaknesses of the trade worldwide, 10% of which pass through the canal.
The limits of the race for gigantism
They are no longer ships but floating sheds that roam the seas. In twenty-five years, the capacity of container ships has quadrupled, reaching 220,000 tonnes. Their size has grown so rapidly that infrastructure is struggling to keep up.
Expansion work was completed in 2015 on the Suez Canal precisely to accommodate behemoths like theEver Given. In France, only two ports, Fos (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), can accommodate them and unload their cargo. Lashing systems, which must hold 22,000 containers to their edges, do not always withstand swells and giant waves. In recent months, several ships have lost thousands of containers in storms at sea such as the One Apus, which lost 1,900 in December 2020. Most cannot be recovered while some contain toxic products.
“Large ships are built under pressure from international carriers who are more than ever looking to ship more goods faster and cheaper., explains Arabelle Bentley, the executive secretary of KIMO International, an NGO for the protection of the seas. However, these huge ships pose a greater threat to the environment. “ The NGO pleads for “Stricter regulations to strengthen safety at sea”. Shipping carriers justify the increase in vessel size by lower freight prices and CO emissions2 per tonne of goods shipped.
Blocking the canal has benefited the Silk Roads …
The misfortunes of the Suez Canal could bring happiness to the Silk Roads developed by China. An article published recently on the website of the Chinese state channel CGTN, explains that the infrastructure financed by Beijing could “Facilitate East-West land trade so that the world economy finally reduces its dependence on bottlenecks such as the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal”.
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