https://archive.is/dbEC7As many as 12 out of every 14 container ships, along with a large share of oil and gas tankers, bound for the key route between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea — which shortens the trip between Asian and European waters, and between Asia and swaths of the Atlantic, by thousands of miles — are instead heading south, according to Everstream Analytics, which analyzes supply chains.
The detour could add as much as a month to time underway, delaying the delivery of goods and the docking of ships that are supposed to continue onward, including to the east coast of the United States and from there back to Asia carrying new loads.
The world’s top 10 container shipping lines are refusing to make the journey through the Red Sea.
Container shipping capacity through the Suez Canal dropped sharply this week, from an already small 40 percent of its full capacity on Monday to 12.7 percent on Wednesday, according to Woitzik.
A month might not sound like a long time for a slow-moving ship, but with the cost to run such a vessel averaging $40,000 to $50,000 per day, “that’s a huge increase in cost and time,” said Corey Ranslem, chief executive of Dryad Global, a maritime intelligence firm.
It will take weeks, or maybe months, to tell how disastrous the situation is, Woitzik said. Many ships have turned off the signals allowing them to be tracked from afar, in an attempt to throw off would-be Houthi attackers, further obfuscating the extent of the situation, he said.
“The longer this issue goes on, the economic impact will continue to increase,” Ranslem said. One immediate effect, he said, is that insurance rates for ships sailing the region have “gone up pretty substantially.” Rates for Israeli-linked ships have gone up as much as 250 percent, according to Woitzik, with some insurers refusing altogether to cover them