The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has started dredging work to extend a second lane that allows for two-way traffic in a southern section of the canal near to where a giant container ship got stuck for six days in March.
The SCA announced this week that it was planning to extend a second canal lane that opened in 2015 by 10 km to make it 82 km long, and would widen and deepen a single lane stretch at the southern end of the canal.
The grounding of the 440-metre Ever Given container ship in a southern section of the canal from March 23-29 delayed the passage of hundreds of vessels through the waterway, disrupting global trade. The Ever Given, is a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship, had ran aground in the single-lane stretch of the canal on March 23 before it was extracted six days later after a massive salvage effort by a flotilla of tugboats.
The Ever Given, still loaded with thousands of containers, is being held in the Great Bitter Lake between two stretches of the canal, amid a dispute over an SCA compensation claim against the ship’s Japanese owner Shoei Kisen.
The work had begun following directives from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi “to immediately start implementing the proposed development plan and put in place a timetable for completion as soon as possible.
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