The 400-meter long, 220,000-ton MV [motor vessel] Ever Given, classed as a so-called “megaship,” veered off course during a gale-force duststorm.
The 59-meter-wide Taiwan-run, Panama-flagged vessel became stuck near the southern end of the Suez Canal, diagonally blocking the man-made waterway that connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.
Opened 150 years ago, Egypt’s Suez Canal has been regularly expanded and modernized, and it is today capable of accommodating some of the world’s largest supertankers, handling roughly 10 percent of international maritime trade. In 2019 around 50 ships used the canal daily, compared with three in 1869.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons 照片：維基共享資源
The majority of oil transported by sea passes through the Suez Canal, which is the fastest crossing from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, but demands hefty passage tolls. The journey between ports in the Persian Gulf and London, for example, is roughly halved by going through the Suez Canal compared to the alternate route via the southern tip of Africa.
Most of the cargo traveling from the Persian Gulf to Western Europe is oil. In the opposite direction, it is mostly manufactured goods and grain from Europe and North America headed to the Far East and Asia.
The latest blockage highlights the risks faced by the shipping industry as more and more vessels transit maritime choke points including the Suez and Panama canals, the Strait of Hormuz and Southeast Asia’s Malacca Strait. Those routes are also having to accommodate increasingly larger ships that are more complex to rescue, while the container-carrying capacity of vessels has doubled in the past decade.
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
(AFP and Bloomberg)
長達四百公尺、二十二萬噸，屬於所謂「超大型船舶」的內燃機船「長賜號」，在沙塵暴的大風中偏離了航道。
這艘五十九公尺寬，由台灣企業經營、以巴拿馬為船旗國的船卡在蘇伊士運河南端附近，以斜角堵住了這條連接地中海與紅海的人造水路。
埃及的蘇伊士運河一百五十年前開航，一直定期進行擴建及現代化改造，如今能夠容納世界上最大的一些超級油輪，經手大約百分之十的國際海洋貿易。二○一九年，每天約有五十艘船通過運河，在一八六九年則為每日三艘。
大部分經海路運輸的石油都會通過蘇伊士運河，但需付高額通行費，蘇伊士運河是由北大西洋通往印度洋最快的渡口。例如，要來往波斯灣諸港及倫敦之間，經由蘇伊士運河要比繞道非洲南端的替代路線縮短了大約一半的行程。
由波斯灣運往西歐的貨品大部分為石油；而反方向的運輸，主要是將歐洲及北美洲的製成品與穀物，運往遠東及亞洲。
近日的蘇伊士運河堵塞事件確實凸顯出航運業所面臨的風險，因為有越來越多的船通過海上戰略咽喉要塞，包括蘇伊士運河、巴拿馬運河、荷莫茲海峽，以及東南亞的麻六甲海峽。這些路線還必須容納體積越來越大的船舶，體積越大，救援起來就越複雜。船舶的裝載貨櫃容量在過去十年中整整翻了一倍。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
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