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Platoonist -> RE: The Suez Channel is blocked (3/27/2021 5:04:59 PM)
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Everything north of the blockage should be able to turn around and get back out, they are all at the Great Bitter Lake. There are two parallel waterways to the north of the lake. To the south there is only the original cut so they run batches of ships in convoy 'one way' at a time.
However, it's obviously the case that for all of those ships which were mid-journey and expecting to use the canal, they are now suddenly faced with the significant additional time and cost - whether they choose to wait things out at either end of the blockage, or whether they choose to take the long Cape of Good Hope route instead. And for any ships which were carrying livestock or perishable items, the additional repercussions might be very significant too.
Any ships choosing to switch to the round-Africa route will also almost certainly need to put into port somewhere en route to take on additional fuel. This will incur additional delay. Plus, there are some crew contracts that will have to be re-negotiated if they expect these ships to remain manned.
Also, whether the affected ships sit it out near the canal until it's over or whether they take the longer alternative route, there will now be serious logistical knock-on effects. These same ships will have been booked to collect new cargoes on specific dates, all of which will very likely now need to be rearranged - and that's nowhere near as easy as it might sound. Plus, the receivers of the goods which are currently being carried by these ships will now have to rearrange the delivery logistics. And many ports around the world will face associated logistical difficulties.
I keep going back to thinking: how can this have been allowed to happen? After all, we're all now seeing the very serious repercussions of it having happened. Any competent risk assessment should, long ago, have implemented mechanisms to minimize to near-zero the chance of this sort of occurrence, plus it should have put in place effective provisions to fix things if it did somehow happen.
And it's hardly as if there were freak and extraordinary conditions behind this incident. We're told that there were pretty strong winds. The geography of the Gulf of Suez, the Med, and the Sinai means that there are very often pretty strong winds in this area.
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