Suez traffic not affected
Companies including Euronav NV and TMT Co, owners of ships designed to haul Middle East crude to Europe and the US, have said that they are reviewing whether to stop sending their carriers through the Suez Canal to avoid travelling near the site of most of the attacks off the coast of Somalia.
A decision to avoid the Suez Canal would delay oil deliveries, reduce the supply of available vessels and add to insurance bills for shippers.
Norway-based Odfjell SE, the world’s largest owner of chemical transporters, already said that it won’t sail past Somalia while BW Gas, the biggest liquefied-gas shipper, may do the same.
Mr Abdelwahab said that the Saudi Arabian supertanker seized by Somali pirates on Nov 15 had a cargo of 300,000 tonnes, much larger than accepted weights for the Suez Canal. The tanker was scheduled to travel around Africa and not through the canal, he said.
There has been too much speculation about traffic in the canal that is contradicted by the latest figures, he said.
For the first 10 months of the year, 18,085 ships have used the waterway, a 7.6 per cent increase over the same period of the previous year, he said.
The Suez Canal, the world’s busiest man-made waterway, saw an increase in tonnage as well for the first 10 months of this year to 796 million tonnes from 695 million tonnes, he said. Revenues rose to US$4.6 billion for the past 10 months from US$3.8 billion for the same period last year.
The 139-year-old waterway, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, is Egypt’s third largest foreign-currency earner.
Last Friday, Ahmed Fadel, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority said that there may be a marginal drop in the canal’s revenues in November and December, citing the global economic slowdown and not piracy.
Mr Fadel also said that his agency will review the fees charged to ships for 2009, after world growth slowed. Tolls may be reduced for some ship types and raised for others.
The new rates will be announced in the second half of December, after the country returns from the long Eidul Fitr holidays, which will start this Sunday to mark the Muslim annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
Since January, at least 91 vessels have been attacked in the Gulf of Aden, an area almost twice the size of Alaska, flanked by Yemen and Somalia. The hijacking of an oil-laden Saudi Arabian supertanker two weeks ago was the most brazen assault yet, as it was the largest vessel seized and was the farthest from the coast when attacked.
Source: hellenicshippingnews
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