An oil tanker ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Aug. 31, blocking the global waterway for several hours before it was refloated, according to the Suez Canal Authority.
The canal is the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia and is accountable for about 15 percent of world shipping traffic.
George Safwat, a spokesman for Suez Canal Authority, told the government-affiliated Extra News satellite television station that the Affinity V oil tanker ran aground at about 7:15 p.m. local time and was refloated about five hours later.
Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, said in a statement that the Singapore-flagged vessel had been wedged in a single-lane stretch of the canal. He said a technical failure in the ship’s steering systems caused it to hit the bank of the canal.
Five of the authority’s tug boats managed to carry out a coordinated operation to refloat the vessel, Rabie said.
TankerTrackers, a ship monitoring service, said that the Affinity V crude oil tanker “temporarily clogged up traffic and is now facing south again, but moving slowly by tugboat assistance.”
The ship is 252 meters (826.7 feet) long and 45 meters (147.6 feet) wide.
Navigation for other ships passing through the canal had since returned to normal, Rabie stated.
The ship, built in 2016, had sailed from Portugal and was en route to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu. It was part of a convoy heading to the Red Sea, Safwat stated.
The location at which it ran aground was close to that of the area where the Japanese-owned Ever Given container ship, which is about 400 meters (1,312 feet) long, in March 2021 caused a pause in traffic for six days in both directions, disrupting up to $9 billion a day in global trade and holding up supply chains.
In September 2021, another large ship ran aground in the Suez Canal. The Panama-flagged Coral Crystal container ship was freed within hours.
