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Ship could be afloat by Sunday night: Official
Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, told reporters in Suez that the ship could possibly be afloat again by Sunday night.
Egypt’s Suez Canal chief said on Saturday that “technical or human errors” could be behind the grounding of a huge container ship blocking the vital waterway, causing a backlog of over 300 vessels.
Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, told reporters in Suez that the ship could possibly be afloat again by Sunday night.
The crisis has crippled global supply chains, forcing companies to consider the expensive option of re-routing vessels around the southern tip of Africa.
Officials had previously blamed 40-knot gusts and a sandstorm that impeded visibility, but Rabie said on Saturday that “strong winds and weather factors were not the main reasons for the ship’s grounding -- there may have been technical or human errors”.
But he sounded an optimistic note when asked when the vessel might be freed.
“We could finish today or tomorrow (Saturday or Sunday), depending on the ship’s responsiveness” to tides, he said.
The canal chief’s timeline echoed comments on Friday by the ship’s owners, but the parent company of the salvage firm was less optimistic.
Yukito Higaki, president of Japanese firm Shoei Kisen which owns the vessel, told local media on Friday that the ship could be freed from the canal bed by late Saturday.
But the executive director of Royal Boskalis, parent company of Smit Salvage which is in charge of the salvage operation, suggested the ship could be afloat again “at the start of next week”.
“We are already in the process of installing a crane on land,” Peter Berdowski told a public television chat-show late on Friday.
“That will allow us to eventually remove all the containers from the foredeck, which could involve hundreds of containers.”
