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 quadrant
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
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