Egypt thwarts alleged plot to bomb Suez Canal

The plot may have been an inside job, as one of the 13 people arrested reportedly worked for the Suez Canal Authority.    Egypt arrested 13 persons, reportedly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, on Monday, saying that they were installing explosives around the Suez Canal in an attempt to disrupt commercial shipping.
   News outlet UPI and the website Middle East Online said that the group of 13 included an employee of the Suez Canal authority and that prosecutors said they planted bombs along the 120 mile long canal.
   The allegations come about two years after a COSCO containership was attacked in the canal.
   The Suez Canal is one of the world’s busiest waterways, offering considerable time and fuel savings to ships traveling from Asia to the Mediterranean and North Europe. A voyage from Tokyo to Rotterdam via the Suez Canal is 8,288 miles, 29 percent shorter than via the Cape of Good Hope. Similarly a voyage from Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia to New Orleans via the Suez Canal is 9,645 miles, 22 percent shorter than via the Cape of Good Hope.
   A 2014 article in CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, said, “An estimated 2.2 million barrels of oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Persian Gulf pass through the Suez Canal every day bound for markets in Europe and North America. In addition, more than 1,500 container ships, headed to Europe and Asia, traversed the canal in the second quarter of 2013.”
   According to the Suez Canal authority, in 2014, there were 17,148 ships (15,302 laden, 1,846 ballasting) that transited the canal, including 6,129 containerships, 3,389 tankers, and 2,461 bulk carriers. Container traffic accounts for the majority of cargo tonnage passing through the canal—534.8 million of the 880.1 million net tons on all laden ships passing through the Suez Canal.
   With no locks, the Suez Canal is a less complex waterway than the Panama Canal. The waterway expects in 30 days to complete an $8.5 million project that the Suez Canal Authority says will double the waterway’s capacity by adding a 45 mile bypass to enable two-way traffic. Remarkably, work on the project began less than a year ago, on August 6, 2014.
   The canal authority says it is “set to increase its annual revenue from $5.3 billion in 2015 to $13.2 billion in 2023.”
   An analysis in Container Insight Weekly by the London-based consultants Drewry on the effect of a Suez Canal closure on the container trade, conducted around the time of the 2013 coup d’etat in Egypt, found “there is enough spare vessel capacity to absorb most of the shock of sailing from the Far East to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope simply by increasing vessel speeds, which means that closure of the Suez Canal tomorrow would not be a train smash.”
   Drewry went on to speculate that “container vessel schedules between Asia and Europe would be immediately adjusted to minimize delays by increasing round-trip speed to an average of approximately 22 knots.
   “Ocean carriers would seek to impose a massive fuel surcharge for this, however,” noted Drewry. “Even if existing speeds were to be maintained after the initial panic was over, extra vessels would be required to maintain a weekly frequency. These would have to be withdrawn from other trade lanes, forcing the speeds of their remaining vessels on the routes to be increased.”
   Suez routing has become important not only for container trade to North Europe and the Mediterranean, but also to North America, as many carriers have chosen to route cargo from the Far East to the U.S. East Coast and Gulf via the Suez Canal rather than the Panama Canal in order to take advantage of the economies of scale of larger ships.
   According to ocean carrier schedule database BlueWater Reporting, there are 17 liner services between Asia and the East Coast of North American that operate through the Panama Canal with an estimated weekly allocated capacity of 57,199 TEUs. Nine loops in the trade transit the Suez Canal with an estimated weekly allocated capacity of 63,842 TEUs.
   Looking at all inbound North American services, BlueWater Reporting estimates weekly deployed capacity through the Suez is 150,188 TEUs and through the Panama is 101,177 TEUs.
   The Suez Canal has been closed on six occasions, most notably for eight years after the six day war with Israel — from June 5, 1967 until June 4, 1975 — for 159 days in 1956 and 1957, and 76 days during World War II. Other closures lasted from 3-5 days.