The Ever Given Incident, and Why it Matters

[Music] many people by now are familiar with this fiasco one of the most seemingly innocent but actually devastating events to occur this decade so let's dive right into it right now details are sketchy but the rough timeline of events is that the merchant vessel ever given a container ship bound for the netherlands from china became grounded in the sand bank at the southern end of the suez canal at around 7 40 a.m local time on tuesday march 23 2021 as of right now the details are sketchy as to the circumstances surrounding why the ship ran aground with many first-hand sources citing everything from mechanical issues to 40 knot winds from the sandstorm that morning as of the recording of this video there is no indication of nefarious intent but what is certain is that the ever given is most definitely stuck here's why that matters not only is he ever given the largest ship ever to run aground in the suez canal it just so happens to be grounded in a way that completely blocks all traffic in both directions this creates a huge global problem roughly 12 percent of all global trade is via ships that transit the canal and 10 percent of the world's petroleum oil and lubricant products or pol and liquid natural gas or lng transit through the canal every year making up roughly 85 of all suez canal traffic so what does this mean and why should anyone care about this event well as one might imagine this creates a significant backup of ships at either end of the canal and as of two days after the grounding hundreds of ships had already anchored at each end of the canal waiting for the ever given to be freed from the mud this also means that global pol and lng prices jumped four percent instantly due to the grounding and have continued to steadily rise every hour that the ship is stuck also some companies have started to send their ships along the only other route around the entire continent of africa not exactly a short journey and also consuming a lot of fuel for the ships that have to take this route and that's not even considering the sharp increase in chances of a shipwreck because the alternate route around the continent just so happens to be some of the most treacherous waters on the planet right now the world is facing a global energy crisis with the energy sector not exactly being as stable as it could be the closing of the u.s keystone pipeline xl has been a devastating blow for the u.s energy production and created an environment that is not conducive to u.s energy independence and russian aggression in the ukraine has sent the global lng prices creeping up due to uncertainty and russia's habit of using energy as a weapon of war things aren't super great for china either as their reliance on lng as an energy source has skyrocketed over the past couple of years this is largely due to their blossoming relationship with turkmenistan a middle eastern dictatorship that also just so happens to have discovered the world's second largest natural gas field in 2006. a pipeline was of course built immediately between china and turkmenistan back in 2007 taking the uzbekistan kazakhstan kyrgyzstan route to china however this pipeline can't keep up with the skyrocketing demand in asia so another pipeline is being laid right now via the afghanistan pakistan india route but as one can immediately see this route takes the pipeline through one of the most war-torn countries in the world and now that the us occupation is at an all-time low something that they weren't planning on when they were building the pipeline the country has plunged into full-on tribal war once again with the taliban and other groups controlling most of the official government and almost the entirety of the land mass of the nation not super reliable land on which to build a pipeline and with the suez back in the press again this puts the pressure on the development of such pipelines to provide an alternative to the waterborne route also something that seems to be forgotten by many is the security situation in the region granted the security situation in the middle east isn't exactly a surprise to anyone but recently several events have made many intelligence analysts raise an eyebrow attacks on several oil tankers over the past few months have rightfully called into question the security of the region once again everything from modern day limpet mines attached to ship's hulls to suicide attacks and boarding attempts have been on the rise over the past couple of months perhaps most memorably was a suicide attack on the bw rhine a singaporean flagged oil tanker suicide attacks via small boats laden with explosives are a stable of insurgents in the region ever since the success of the attack on the uss cole in 2001 but what makes this attack significant is that this attack occurred in port but not just any port the port city of jedha in saudi arabia one of the busiest and most heavily secured ports in the world of course no one claimed the attack but the international community looked immediately to iran as the source of the attack due to their other recent attacks on shipping and hijackings in the region around the same time that were conducted as a result of sanctions levied on the beleaguered nation so even though the security situation at the suez canal which is highly secured is different than the piracy capital of the world down at the gulf of aden the security situation isn't vastly different and it is certainly not an ideal situation to have hundreds of ships hanging around in that part of the world so this is why a single ship stuck in a mud bank can have far and wide ranging impacts on everything from the global energy market to war in nations around the world now of course the ship will eventually be freed and they can now reopen to all traffic instead of having to be diverted to the older canal sections and the world will largely forget about this incident pretty much immediately so this is most certainly a temporary problem but this temporary problem highlights permanent issues for many nations energy independence as well as the security of maritime operations in the region regardless of how quickly the ever given is recovered this seemingly small problem brings to light even bigger problems for the future and in classic 2021 fashion these things tend to happen at the worst possible times [Music] foreign