I notice that the south end of the Suez Canal (the 20-25 miles from Suez to Small Bitter Lake) is a one-way canal, with north-bound convoys going thru at certain times, and south-bound convoys at other times. That was part of the problem when the ship EverGiven was stuck there, the whole canal was blocked.
About 6 years ago, the northern part of the canal was expanded by adding a second canal channel alongside, so south-bound ships use one channel and north-bound use the other channel. This took several years, and cost about $9 billion.
My question is why this wasn’t also done on the southern section of the canal? This is a shorter section than the northern area. And given the economic cost figures I’ve seen discussed for this week-pong blockage, it seems like spending $9-10 billion here would be a worthwhile investment. Is it just a matter of Egypt not willing to spend this money, or is there some other reason? And will there now be some pressure from worldwide shippers advocating this?
Probably funding reasons; for some reason, they issued “interest bearing investment certificates” (bonds?) exclusively to Egyptian entities to finance the “New Suez Canal” back in 2014. I’m not sure that they have another 9 billion worth of investors to fund this second round of construction.
Note that an average of only 51 ships pass through the Suez Canal per day. This frankly isn’t that heavy a volume–about one per 28 minutes if they operate 24 hours a day.
[Yes, but many of those ships are big – oil supertankers, or like the EverGiven, which is as long as the Empire State Building. It’s been mentioned many times in coverage of the blockage that 10%-15% of world shipping passes through the canal. That seems enough to be worth some investment in improvements.
Just a guess, but it may be that the one-way section is short enough to handle the expected levels of traffic. I found a cite that says the maximum speed allowed in the canal is about 8 knots. One ship could get through the one-way section in 3 hours. If you knew how much time was between each ship, you could figure out how many could get through in 6 hours (starting when the first ship enters, and ending when the last ship leaves). Then open it for 6 hours in the other direction, and you know the throughput capacity of that portion of the canal. If that meets the expected demand, they should be fine.
Ships can easily carry enough fuel and food to transit the canal without needing to dock at either end. They can travel way, way further than a canal transit without needing to dock.
Here is an Egyptian news story from 2014 covering the initiation of that expansion project. It refers to “national security concerns” as the reason why the project hadn’t been taken up earlier, and also as the reason why the two-lane part of canal after the project would not extend along the entire length of the existing canal.
Now, for me, unspecified “national security concerns” are often code for “there must be a reason, but either we don’t know it exactly ourselves, or we do but we don’t want to tell you”.
The original idea was to sell on the open market: then they realized (again) that there was no commercial value, so they sold them to the suckers at home. [opinion] ‘Suckers’ because the interest is being funded out of taxes, so they loose either way. Since (as surprised nobody), the traffic did not double, selling to big international investment funds would have meant either (a) selling at a massive discount, or (b) transferring all that tax money out of Egypt and into the hands of international investment funds. Either or both would have been politically unacceptable.[/opinion]
Felucca operators could carry as much as 28% of the Suez cargo volumes, or less. Camel trains would be on standby should water levels in the Nile drop.
Questioned whether such a scheme remained feasible, a spokesperson said: “See those pyramids? We built those, didn’t we?”
I’m detecting a hint of April-1-based humor in this.
The Jordanian-Israeli plan to pump water into the Dead Sea involves a significant uphill portion several hundred feet upward north of Eilat/Aqaba. I don’t think the relief is very different a few degrees in the other direction.
I’m trying to imagine the political implications of building a canal along one of the world’s more sensitive borders.
As mentioned. Cost (and sand) is the impediment. The balleyhooded $5-6 or $8-10 million/billion/ something a day losses were hogwash though a catchy headline. The shipments were delayed, not dumped in the desert or at sea and lost. There were some livestock vessels but those got prioritized when things opened up. A few ships diverted to go around; they’ll lose a few hundred thousand combined in fuel. Labor for most multinational crews is peanuts.
That’s both a benefit and a drawback, at least as far as its operator is concerned. Egypt has deliberately obstructed the canal for at least one long period (from 1967 to 1975) by mining it and scuttling ships. Obviously if they felt it necessary to do so again, a wider canal would make that less practical.
