The owner of the Ever Given, the stranded container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for days, is hopeful that the 220,000-ton vessel can be pulled off Saturday evening.
Yukito Higaki, president of the ship lease company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, said in a press conference for Japanese media.
Higaki explained that soil is removed from under the ship with the help of dredging equipment. Once pulled loose, the 400-meter-long Ever Given should function as before. “The ship does not make water. There are no problems with the rudder and propellers.”
CEO Peter Berdowski of Boskalis, the parent company of Smit Salvage, was also more optimistic about the progress with the container ship’s refloating.
On Friday, he said Nieuwsuur that the Ever Given, if all goes well, can be released after the weekend. Previously, he did not dare to estimate and warned that the job could take days or even weeks.
The ship ran aground on Tuesday and is so transverse that Egypt’s channel is blocked for other ships. This affects global transport flows hard, because usually, many ships are sailing. The channel accounts for about 12 percent of world trade.
Nearly $ 10 billion worth of goods is transported through the canal every day.