Oil tanker briefly blocks Suez Canal; freed within hours

An oil tanker ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal, briefly blocking the global waterway before it was freed, the canal’s authority said.
The Singaporean-flagged Affinity V vessel had become wedged in a single-lane stretch of the canal Wednesday, the Suez Canal Authority’s head Osama Rabie said in a statement issued the body.
He said that five of the authority’s tug boats managed to get the vessel floating again in a coordinated operation. He said a technical failure in the boat’s steering mechanism caused it to hit the bank of the canal, and that navigation for other ships passing through the canal had returned to normal.
A spokesman for Suez Canal Authority told the government-affiliated Extra News satellite television channel that the ship ran aground around 7.15 pm local time, and was floating again some five hours later. George Safwat said the vessel sailed from Portugal and its destination was the Saudi Arabian Red Sea port of Yanbu.
He said the vessel was part of a convoy heading south to the Red Sea. Two convoys transit through the Suez Canal everyday; One north-bound to the Mediterranean and the other south-bound to the Red Sea.
The ship was built in 2016 with a length of 252 metres and a width of 45 metres.
In March of 2021, the Japanese-owned Ever Given, a colossal container ship, was stuck for nearly a week in the canal.
Buffeted a sandstorm, the Ever Given crashed into a bank of a single-lane stretch of the canal about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez. The blockage created a massive traffic jam that held up USD9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened the coronavirus pandemic.
A few months later, in September of 2021, another large shipping vessel ran aground before authorities managed to free it within hours.