Ships started sailing through the Suez Canal again on Tuesday after tugs refloated giant container carrier Ever Given which had been stuck diagonally across the passage, bringing all movement of vessels through the waterway to a halt for an entire week.

The Suez is the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia and accounts for 15% of global trade. The alternative route around the southern tip of Africa takes a good 10 days longer which also entails a much larger fuel burn.

Evergreen Line, which is leasing the Ever Given, said the ship would be inspected for seaworthiness in the Great Bitter Lake, which separates two sections of the canal.

“The ship was ready for limited navigation after an initial inspection and not a single container was damaged, but a second investigation will be more precise and if it was affected it will show,” said Admiral Osama Rabie, Chairman and Managing Director of the Suez Canal Authority.    .
 
He said that within four days, traffic would return to normal. “We’ll work day and night to end the backlog.”

Vessels waiting to transit the canal include dozens of container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels, Nile TV reported.

Around 30,000 cubic metres of sand had been dredged to refloat the 224,000-tonne container ship and a total of 11 tugs and two powerful sea tugs were used to pull the ship free.

Vessels similar in size to the Ever Given, which is one of the world’s largest container ships, could pass through the canal safely and the SCA would not change its policy on admitting such ships, Rabie said.

Shipping group Maersk said the knock-on disruptions to global shipping could take weeks or months to unravel.