Suez Canal: Oil tanker "Affinity V" ran aground - shipping lane blocked for several hours

Created: 09/01/2022 07:44

By: Markus Hofstetter

The Ever Given accident in the Suez Canal in March had an enormous impact on global supply chains.

Now there has been another incident at the same place.

Port Said - In March of last year, the "Ever Given" got stuck in the Suez Canal, interrupting one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.

One result was delivery bottlenecks in global trade.

It took six days for the huge container ship to be refloated and even longer for the dispute over costs between the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) and the shipping company to be resolved.

Oil tanker runs aground in the Suez Canal: shipping lane was blocked for several hours

Now, late Wednesday afternoon (August 31), another ship ran aground in the Suez Canal.

This was announced by the Suez Canal Authority, which recently reported record income, on Twitter.

Accordingly, she received the report of the accident at 5 p.m. (local time).

The unfortunate ship is therefore the 252 meter long and 45 meter wide oil tanker "Affinity V" with 64,000 gross register tons.

A technical fault at the rudder is given as the cause, so that the ship could no longer be steered.

The authorities then sent out tugs, which got the “Affinity V” afloat again after around five hours.

Traffic has been back to normal since midnight.

Oil tanker runs aground in the Suez Canal: Incident occurred in the same place as the "Ever Given"

The ship monitoring service TankerTrackers also wrote on Twitter that the "Affinity V" had lost control in the Suez Canal in a southerly direction.

"She temporarily obstructed traffic and is now heading south again, but is moving slowly with the help of tugs." According to the ship's Vesselfinder radar, the tanker has now left the Suez Canal in a southerly direction.

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According to the Suez Canal Authority, the "Affinity V" crashed at kilometer 143.

The incident thus took place in the same southern, single-lane section of the canal where Ever Given was stranded.

In order to avoid further accidents, the authorities announced the expansion of the canal last year.

For this purpose, the canal is to be widened so that passage in both directions will be possible.

A deepening is also planned.

The work is scheduled to be completed in 2023.