- The Ever Given cannot leave the Suez Canal until compensation has been paid, officials said Thursday.
- It is still unclear how much will be paid, although it could amount to $ 1 billion.
- The owner of the Ever Given said he had not yet officially heard from Egyptian authorities.
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Although the gigantic Even Given container ship may have been liberated from the shores of the Suez Canal, it is still trapped, trapped in a row of who has to pay to remove it from the waterway.
Egyptian authorities said they would not release the massive ship, which had been stranded in the Suez Canal for almost a week, until the owners agreed to pay up to $ 1 billion in compensation.
“The vessel will remain here until the investigation is completed and compensation is paid,” Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, who heads the Suez Canal Authority, told a local news station on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We are hoping for a speedy agreement,” he said, adding that the vessel would be allowed to move once they were compensated.
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Rabie said Egyptian authorities would demand $ 1 billion to cover the cost of liberating the vessel.
The figure covers the cost of the equipment and machinery used to clear the road, damage to the canal itself through dredging and compensates about 800 people who worked to release the 200,000-ton ship, Rabei said.
It will also recoup the cost of blocking the canal, which eventually caused an epic traffic jam of more than 400 ships on either side of the canal.
Rabie did not say exactly how he came to the figure.
According to the London financial firm Revenitiv, the Egyptian state has lost $ 95 million in transit costs due to the blockage.
An aerial photograph of the Suez Canal in Egypt, taken from a commercial flight on March 27, 2021.
Mahmoud Khaled / AFP via Getty Images
It is also still unclear who will pay the compensation of Egypt. Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the Japanese owner of Ever Given, told the Wall Street Journal that he had not officially heard from the Egyptian authorities.
Eric Hsieh, president of Evergreen Marine Corp., the charter of Ever Given, said the company is “free from liability for cargo delays” because “it will be covered by insurance,” Bloomberg reported.
The 1,300-foot Ever Foot made headlines on March 23 when an unexpected windstorm caused it to move off course and lay in the sandbanks of the Suez Canal, disrupting world trade. It was liberated six days later.
Egypt has since launched a formal investigation into how the vessel got stuck in the first place.
The ship, the cargo and the Indian crew of 25 people, will remain anchored in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt until the investigation is completed. Earlier this month, authorities told Insider that the ship’s crew was safe and would continue to pay.
Rabie said he prefers to settle the case out of court, although he does not rule out a lawsuit.
“We can agree on a certain compensation, or it will go to court,” he told CNBC. “If they decide to go to court, the ship must be kept.”