Risk register · entry
Q3 · EngineeredSuez Canal blockage
One ship wedged sideways choked 12% of world trade for six days.
Tightly coupled systems where one small fault cascades and takes down the whole machine.
Why this room
Suez Canal transit risk was modelled as a bounded, engineered problem with known recovery paths, pilots, speed limits, tugboats, but once a single loss of steerage blocked the only lane with no way to route around it, the payoff structure turned nonlinear and the tail fattened into a multi-billion-dollar-a-day global cascade that no canal-transit model had priced, moving the event from Q3 (Engineered) toward Q4 (Where models die).
The record
- Grounding date: March 23, 2021, 07:40 localcertain
- Refloated: March 29, 2021, 15:05 local; total blockage 6 days 7 hourscertain
- Ever Given: approx. 400 metres long, ~224,000 tons, ~20,000 TEU capacitycertain
- Wind gusts approximately 35-40 knots during sandstorm at time of groundinglikely
- Ship speed 12-13 knots against an 8.64-knot canal speed limitlikely
- Peak queue of roughly 367-369 ships waiting to transitcertain
- Suez Canal carries approximately 12% of global trade by volumecertain
- Estimated $9.6 billion/day in goods delayed (Lloyd's List estimate)likely
- Estimated $400 million/hour in delayed tradelikely
- Egypt's Suez Canal Authority lost an estimated $12-14 million/day in transit revenuelikely
- Suez Canal Authority's initial damages claim: $916 million, later reduced to $600 millioncertain
- Final settlement between owner and Suez Canal Authority: $540 million, reached July 2021certain
- Owner's third-party liability cover: $3.1 billion via UK P&I Clubcertain
- Reported Maersk-related loss around $89 millionuncertain
Sources
The book
This entry is one of 111 in the register. The full story, and what it cost the people who lived it, is in Risky Business by Claudia Zeisberger, David Munro and Joanna Reijgersberg-Siew.
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