Suez Canal still operating as service workers strike

Shipping on Egypt’s Suez Canal, used to carry about 8 percent of global seaborne trade, is transiting on schedule after service workers linked to the waterway began striking, the Suez Canal Authority said.

Workers from Suez Canal Co. began a sit-in today, Al-Ahram newspaper reported earlier today in its online edition, without saying where it got the information. The 6,000 workers are from Suez, Port Said and Ismailia, Al-Ahram said.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Suez Canal traffic and the canal is operating normally,” Mohamed Motair, director of companies at the Suez Canal Authority, said by phone. The striking employees belong to seven service companies linked to the waterway and are not involved in operations, he said.

The waterway is the fastest crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, according to the Suez Canal Authority. Should it close, tankers would have to sail around southern Africa. That would add about 12 days to a journey from Saudi Arabia to Houston, Luis Mateus, an analyst at Riverlake Shipping SA in Geneva, estimated last week.

Tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square today, extending protests against President Hosni Mubarak as Vice President Omar Suleiman sought to convince demonstrators that the government is serious about moving toward democracy and stabilizing the economy.

Egyptian ports were working normally today, according to Inchcape Shipping Services, which has offices in Alexandria, Cairo, Damietta, Port Said and Port Suez. Suez Canal transits were running on time from both ends, Inchcape said in a notice on its website.

A vessel going from Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam can cut the distance traveled by about 42 percent by using the canal rather than sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, data on the canal authority’s website show. To southern France the saving is 57 percent and to New York 30 percent, the data show.

The canal has the capacity to handle 2.2 million barrels of oil a day while that of the adjacent Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline is 2.3 million barrels, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Actual volumes in 2009 were a combined 2.1 million barrels because of cuts in production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the bank said. (source: businessweek)

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