There is a jumbo traffic jam on the Suez Canal A giant container ship blocks one of the most important highways of global trade.
The Suez Canal is a human-made waterway that cuts north-south across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. It connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, making it the shortest maritime route to Asia from Europe. Since its completion in 1869, it has become one of the world’s most heavily used shipping lanes.
International shipping faces a mounting problem. On Tuesday the Ever Given, a 400m long container ship—one of the world’s largest became stuck in the Suez Canal and a traffic jam of ships has formed along with one of the world’s most important sea-lanes.
This canal provides access to 30 percent of the world's shipping container transit. Nearly 19,000 vessels traveled through the maritime shortcut last year carrying 12 percent of global trade by volume and 10 percent of the world’s oil.
The price of crude shot up by 5 percent on news of the disruption. The sight of a blockage on its main source of foreign earnings will have worried Egypt’s government, too.
