The Suez Canal Authority announced that 87% of the dredging operations had been completed at the front of the ship, "Ever Given", which ran aground and disrupted navigation in the Suez Canal. While Cairo received an offer from the United States to help the ship's floatation efforts, Moscow called for searching for alternative sea routes.

Navigation in the Suez Canal is still suspended for the fourth consecutive day, after a huge container ship ran aground due to bad weather and closed the waterway, while the Egyptian authorities' efforts to remove it continue, in light of the impact of global trade traffic in this accident.

The Suez Canal Authority confirmed in a statement on Friday morning that the dredging work aims to remove the sand surrounding the bow of the ship, which ranges between 15 and 20 thousand cubic meters, which will be expelled through external expulsion lines for the dredger to reach the draft suitable for its float, which ranges from 12 to 16 meters in depth.

The authority added that it is looking forward to cooperating with the United States in efforts to float the delinquent container ship, which has been disrupting shipping traffic for 4 days.

She expressed her gratitude for all the offers she had received for assistance in this regard, stressing her keenness to ensure the regularity of global navigation in the canal as soon as possible.

The container ship "Evergiven" ran aground last Tuesday morning in the southern side of the canal near the city of Suez. The vessel, which was on a voyage from China to Rotterdam, is 400 meters long, 59 meters wide, and its total cargo is 224,000 tons.

Taiwan's Evergreen Marine leases the vessel from the Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha.

Turkish show

Meanwhile, Turkish Transport Minister Adil Karah Ismailoglu expressed his country's readiness to provide the necessary assistance if the need arises.

"We have conveyed our offer to help our Egyptian brothers, and if we receive a positive response from them, our ship," Nanah Khatun ", is one of the few ships in the world that can carry out works of this kind, Ismailoglu said.

He added that Ankara had not received a response yet, but was ready to act.

On Thursday, the Taiwanese charter company, Evergreen, revealed the stranded vessel in a statement that it had used two Japanese and Dutch teams to contribute to the rescue of the ship.

The Japanese company that owns the ship denied that it sought to float the ship on Saturday evening, and said that efforts are still underway.

International crisis

The Times indicated that the removal of the giant cargo ship that caused the closure of the Suez Canal could take weeks, leading to a crisis in international shipping and a possible shortage of basic commodities and fuel, according to experts.

The newspaper pointed out that the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority had previously ruled out unloading the containers from the stranded ship due to the long time that this might take.

It is possible that congestion will prevent the return of empty containers to Asia, and thus the matter is exacerbated by the disruption that affected shipping operations due to the Corona epidemic.

Figures indicate that nearly 19 thousand ships passed through the Suez Canal last year carrying more than one billion tons of cargo.

Alternative methods

For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the disruption of navigation in the Suez Canal due to the accident of stranding of the ship will make the world think about searching for alternative strategic maritime routes, foremost of which is the road that passes from Asia to Europe through Russian waters in the North Sea.

The special ambassador for Arctic cooperation issues at the Russian Foreign Ministry, Nikolai Kuchunov, stressed the importance of thinking about diversifying maritime supply routes, to cope with the increasing volume of international shipping traffic.

And he considered that solutions are needed to avoid disrupting the work of international supply chains that would lead to great losses to the global economy.

Major international shipping companies such as Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd are studying possible alternatives to overcome the shipbuilding crisis in the face of the disruption of the Egyptian shipping route.

The global shipping news and data company Lloyds List says that the container ship "Evergreen" bound for the Suez Canal, a container ship of the same size and capacity as the stranded ship "is now turning its destination to the Cape of Good Hope."

The company stated that "there is a queue to cross the Suez Canal" that includes more than 200 ships "now stuck due to closure."