The giant container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week was fully floated on Monday and traffic in the waterway would resume, the canal authority said in a statement.
The vessel is now fully afloat, the Suez Canal Authority said in a statement. Tug boats hauled the giant vessel away from the side of the waterway, where it had been lodged since last Tuesday.
Leth Agencies said that the vessel had been refloated on Monday. Helped by the peak of high tide, a flotilla of tugboats managed to wrench the bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the sandy back of the crucial waterway, where it had been firmly lodged since last Tuesday.
Tugboats were pulling the vessel toward the Great Bitter Lake, in the middle of the waterway, where it will undergo inspections.
Efforts will now get under way to restart shipping navigation, with more than 450 vessels waiting near the canal. The backlog has strained global supply chains already stretched by the pandemic as the route is a conduit for about 12% of global trade.
Brent crude dropped 0.6 per cent to trade at $64.20 a barrel as of 2:16 p.m. in London.
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