Satellite imagery gives another perspective on the developing situation in Egypt’s Suez Canal, where a mega cargo container ship was turned sideways and became stuck, blocking the busy passageway.
Imagery captured on Tuesday by a Planet Labs’ Dove satellite showed the stranded ship, called the Ever Given, in the canal.
The Ever Given is about 1,300 feet long (or nearly a quarter mile) and 193 feet wide. The ship weighs about 220,000 tons and is capable of carrying as many as 20,000 containers.
A synthetic aperture radar image captured by Capella Space on Wednesday gave another look at the Ever Given, showing how it was wedged into the wall of the canal. Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh noted that the ship’s blurriness in the image “is due to its movement on the water.”
“We took this image over 20+ seconds so you are seeing the ship movement during those 20 seconds,” Banazadeh wrote in an email to CNBC.
Suez port agent GAC told Reuters that as of Wednesday morning, Ever Given had been partially refloated and moved against the bank of the canal.
“The vessel remains aground as of this moment of time, but efforts to re-float her continue in close cooperation with the Suez Canal Authority,” a Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement spokesperson told CNBC around 11:45 a.m. ET. The firm is the technical manager of Ever Given.
The ship’s Taiwan-based operator Evergreen Marine Corp. said in a statement that the Ever Given ran aground after being overcome by strong wind as it entered the Suez Canal from the Red Sea. The operator noted that none of its containers had sunk.
— CNBC’s Pippa Stevens, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Source: Business - cnbc.com
