How 1 Boat Just Caused a $400 Million an Hour Traffic Jam

this video was made possible by skillshare the first 1000 people to use the link in my description will get a free trial of skillshare premium at the end of march just a couple weeks ago something incredibly catastrophic happened that caused the entire global supply chain of goods to be thrown into total chaos and it was all caused by a single ship and 25 people on board it all began with a cargo ship called the ever given a new class of mega container ships that was traveling from port in malaysia to the port of rotterdam in the netherlands among the largest container ships in the entire world the ever given is roughly the same length of the empire state building in new york city at 400 meters long and since it's capable of carrying 20 000 cargo containers it's roughly the same weight as the willis or sears tower is in chicago it's truly a colossal ship and the shortest route for a ship of this size carrying goods from asia to europe is through the suez canal in egypt the suez canal was opened in 1869 and ever since it's become one of the most important trade routes in the entire world it offered ships transporting cargo between europe and asia a massive shortcut over the alternative of traveling all the way south around the african continent today the suez canal continues to offer the quickest route for ships transporting the massive quantities of manufactured goods in china and asia to the massive market of affluent customers in europe and as a result the suez canal is big business roughly 12 of all of the world's goods flow through the canal every year and on average 51 cargo ships carrying over 9 billion dollars worth of oil gas grain and consumer goods pass through it every single day the canal is the primary reason for egypt's geopolitical significance and one of the country's primary sources of revenue last year alone generating over 5 billion dollars for the country and fees for cargo ships passing through it entire wars have been fought over the ownership of the suez canal and it's no wonder why the alternative of traveling around africa adds over 10 days of travel time and 3 800 miles to the average ship traveling between china and europe which means more money is spent on fuel crew and delays in getting cargo to their ports and into the hands of consumers the suez canal is therefore an absolutely vital part of the global shipping industry and the closure of the canal can wreak absolute havoc on this entire delicate time-sensitive system the canal has only been closed twice before this incident and i made a video about one of those times but this time could potentially be even worse because global trade is bigger now than it ever has been before now let's get back to the developing story of the ever given the ship departed port in malaysia carrying 20 000 cargo containers full of consumer products destined for rotterdam and according to the usual procedure arrived at the port of suez in the red sea while it awaited entry into the suez canal for its journey over to the mediterranean where it would afterwards sail along to rotterdam the suez canal authority or sca oversees traffic within the canal and as usual they place two official sca pilots on board the ever given to help its crew travel along the complicated process of getting through the canal but within hours of entering the canal at approximately 7 30 a.m local time on the 23rd of march the ever given experienced a freak sandstorm event that obscured visibility aboard not only that but the strong winds from the storm were pushing against the ever givens 20 000 cargo containers on top like it was all a giant sail this ended up causing the ship to lose all ability to steer pushed the ship sideways and caused it to ram bow first into the east side of the suez canal this point of the canal is only 200 meters wide compared to the ever givens length of 400 meters and since it was now positioned sideways it meant that this entire width of the canal was blocked which in effect meant that the entire swiss canal system was all of a sudden rendered completely impassable by just a single boat now before we go any further the egyptian government has sort of been doing stuff to try and prevent a situation exactly like this from happening they knew that as cargo ships have been getting bigger and bigger over the years to accommodate growing international demand that eventually ships would become too big to even get through the narrow suez canal so they knew in the early 2010s that something had to be done in order to increase the canal's capacity and so between 2012 and 2019 the egyptian government initiated a more than 8 billion dollar planned to expand it by adding additional channels at certain points this meant that at these points if a ship got stuck it could be bypassed by other ships using the newly built adjacent channels unfortunately though these new secondary channels weren't constructed along the entire suez canal's length and the entire stretch of the canal south of this lake was kept as just a single channel well guess which part the empire state building size boat just crashed into yep right here in the single length channel meaning that it was impossible for any other ships to get around it now every single hour that this ship is stuck there is increasingly catastrophic for the entire global economy nine billion dollars worth of goods travel through the canal every day which means that for every hour the ever given is clogging up the canal it's holding up 400 million dollars worth of international trade immediately after the impact happened 15 other ships who were traveling behind it pretty much immediately found themselves stuck as well while at the same time around 200 more ships were waiting on both the north and south sides for them to clear the mess up before entering by the end of the weekend following the crash it was estimated that there would be over 300 ships waiting in line outside of the canal for entry the worst traffic jam of the 21st century has just happened and it continues to get worse and worse more ships are arriving at the red sea and mediterranean ports every single day and while initially the sca allowed ships in the mediterranean to enter and anchor in this sea within the canal it quickly reached capacity and the entire suez canal was shut down for all traffic afterwards it's incredibly apparent in these sets of satellite photographs taken by the european space agency over the southern entry point to the canal on the red sea on the left we have a photo taken on the 21st of march before the ever given became stuck and it looks fairly normal and on the right we have a photo taken in the exact same place just four days later on the 25th of march just two days after the ever given ran aground you can clearly see the massive backlog of ships queuing up outside waiting to enter which was forcing the captains of new ships arriving and old ships remaining stuck to make a critical decision would they continue to anchor outside of the suez ports and just wait it out hoping that it would only take a few more days to move the ever given out of the way or would they cut their losses and change course for the longer and more expensive route around africa moving around africa would add 10 days of unexpected travel times and approximately 26 000 per day of extra costs and fuel but waiting around at the suez ports had an unknown time and cost restriction after the ship crashed on tuesday the 23rd there were genuine fears among many that removing the ever given could have taken several weeks and in that event changing course for going around africa would have been the better play on the other hand if a ship decided to do this and got halfway around cape town into the atlantic and then all of a sudden the ship was freed it would have probably been a bad play nobody knew what was the right call to make but every single day that the ever given remains stuck the situation got worse and worse the suez canal can only allow a maximum of 106 ships through it every day and as each day passes the number of ships queuing up outside just keeps building and building each day the canal is closed adds more ships to this queue and adds more time for the sca to process ships traveling through in the order that they showed up in which effectively causes a ripple effect of delays if the canal is closed for four days then it'll take four days after them reopening to essentially just catch back up to where they were before the closure happened in effect this means that each day the canal is shut will cause an exponential slowdown in the entire flow of goods between europe and asia and really the entire world leading to increased prices on goods and fuel that'll be passed on to consumers it's estimated that a closure of the canal for even two weeks could result in the stranding of as much as one-fourth of the cargo containers that would usually be within european ports by this point and all of this is happening when the supply of cargo containers is already at an almost historic low because of the global pandemic going on that you've maybe heard about the demand in europe and north america for consumer goods produced in china has skyrocketed and as a result the historic continuous flow of cargo on ships from china has been clogging ports across the developed world and combined with a shortage in availability of workers due to the pandemic it's been causing widespread historic delays in processing and shortages in containers before the suez even became blocked the cost of shipping a container from china to north america had more than doubled since november of last year to the present and as a result of that many shipping companies in the united states were rerouting their cargo arriving from asia from the west coast to the u.s east coast instead before the suez closure one third of all cargo arriving to the u.s east coast from asia was traveling through the suez canal and this is obviously now impacted as well in effect the ever given crashing into the side of the suez canal happened at probably the worst possible time since there's an already unprecedentedly stressed global supply chain the race to free the ship and unblock one of the world's most vital arteries at its most critical moment therefore began immediately but it's been very difficult here's a bunch of photos that have been taken of the situation it turns out that removing a big boat the size and weight of one of humanity's biggest skyscrapers that's firmly lodged into the beach on two sides of a narrow canal is actually a pretty difficult task to accomplish initially the egyptian government summoned a fleet of tugboats to the scene to nudge and pull the ever given out of place but the ship turned out to be too big and too heavy for this alone to work so next up they brought out a series of excavators to begin digging away the sand and the mud from beneath the ship's bow in an attempt to free it but it was slammed in too deep so next up they hired a dutch and a japanese company to bring out some dredgers to essentially suck up the sand and the mud from beneath the ship's bow in an attempt to get it floating again and free from the bank this was moderately successful early on but the ship would ultimately be freed with the help from the forces of nature tides the rising and falling of the sea is a constant phenomenon across the world and is obviously a force to be reckoned with within the suez canal as well high tides will occur 12 hours and 25 minutes apart and it takes 6 hours and 12 and a half minutes for water at the shore to go from high to low or from low to high these were the best windows for the salvage crews to work in to free the ever given because each time the tide rose the massive boat stood a better chance of actually becoming buoyant again and the tugboats used these to their advantage on sunday the 28th of march five days after the ever given had become trapped the sun and moon were in alignment and their combined gravity resulted in an exceptionally strong high tide that helped the workers and engineers on the ground to finally be able to yank the ship free on monday the 29th of march after being stuck and blocking one of the world's most vital trade arteries for six days the ever given was transported up to the widest section of the suez canal up here and placed out of the way so that normal traffic could once again resume more than 54 billion dollars worth of trade goods were held up or disrupted as an immediate consequence of the ever givens incident a figure approximately the same as the annual gdp of croatia but as of the writing of this script the situation still isn't over as the canal was blocked for six days that meant that hundreds of other cargo ships who arrived during that time were simply waiting outside to pass through even after the ever given was cleared out it still meant a time scale of several days to process these ships through the canal and get back to business as usual as it was the syrian government already announced that it would begin rationing fuel after the suez closure delayed a critical shipment of oil and lebanon was forced to concede that if the closure went on any longer they would have begun to ration fuel as well the six day shutdown of the suez canal affected as much as 15 percent of the entire world's shipping container capacity which led to shipping delays across the entire globe and all of this global chaos was caused by just a single ship with 25 people on board and it only lasted for six days just imagine how catastrophic the global consequences might have been if the canal was shut down for any longer people are sometimes really really good at creating challenges for other people to solve but some people do it in a way that's a lot more helpful and beneficial than ramming a giant ship into one of the world's most important trade routes perhaps you have your own challenges you're facing right now for a big personal goal or passion project that you've been excited to start but you're not sure that you have the skills required to do it just yet thankfully for you skillshare can help you out when you go to visit them next when i started real life lore just a bit over five years ago now i had absolutely no idea what i was doing i didn't go to school for animation or video editing and i was incredibly terrified of even starting because i knew that i didn't have the necessary skills to do things right i ended up teaching myself over time by watching tutorial videos online and i would have done anything to have known about my friend evan from polymatter's class on skillshare called make animated youtube videos that'll show you step by step how to make a great youtube video exactly like the one you just watched that i created or perhaps you'd like to get started creating more traditional youtube videos that you film yourself 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Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 1,968,546

Rating: 4.8975821 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, suez, Suez canal, Suez Canal 2021, 2021, Suez Canal crisis, ever given, Suez Canal meme, Suez Canal boat, Suez Canal blocked, Suez Canal block

Id: 1S3Ca9v6pyo

Length: 16min 23sec (983 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/62MilesDown]

I've seen a lot of people jump on the Suez bandwagon, but this is by far one of the best explaination videos 😁