(Bloomberg) -- A giant ship that blocked the Suez Canal has now been moved alongside the bank of the waterway, potentially easing the disruption to one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes for everything from oil to consumer goods.
The Ever Given, a container ship longer than the Eiffel Tower that ran aground in the southern part of the canal in Egypt, could soon be towed to a different position, allowing traffic to resume in the waterway, GAC, a provider of port-agent services, said on its website, citing information from the Suez Canal Authority.
The blockage has left dozens of vessels gridlocked as they attempted to transit between the Red Sea and Mediterranean. Efforts to remove the vessel proceeded faster than initial warnings that the canal could be blocked for days.
The 193-kilometer-long (120 miles) Suez Canal is among the most trafficked waterways in the world, used by tankers shipping crude from the Middle East to Europe and North America. About 12% of global trade and 8% of liquefied natural gas pass through the canal, as do around 1 million barrels of oil each day.