Shipping in the Suez Canal, the strategic waterway connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea, hasn’t been affected by unrest in Egypt, according to a canal authority official.
“The protests have no effect on the shipping traffic,” Abdul Ghani Mohamed Mahmoud, head of public relations at the Suez Canal Authority, told Zawya Dow Jones via telephone yesterday. “The canal is secured by armed forces. No one can come near it. Everything is going as usual.”
Shipping traffic has been “completely normal” since Tuesday, when unrest broke out, said another official, Ahmed al-Munukhly, director of the transit department at the authority.
“The average daily shipping traffic over the last few days is the same as before the events started,” al-Munukhly added.
The Suez Canal, one of the world’s most heavily used shipping lanes, is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency along with petroleum exports, tourism and remittances from Egyptians living overseas. The 190km canal is a key transit route for crude oil shipments from the Gulf region.
According to US Energy Information Administration data, an estimated 1mn bpd of crude and refined products flowed north through the canal to the Mediterranean in 2009, with 800,000bpd heading south to the Red Sea.
Benchmark crude-oil futures surged 4.3% to settle at $89.34 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday on fears that escalating political tensions in Egypt could spread throughout the region and threaten the supply of crude.
Meanwhile, Egyptian ports are operating despite protests sweeping the country but a military-imposed curfew has slowed loading, shipping agents said yesterday.
A spokesman for the government’s Red Sea Ports Authority, Salah Hashim, said his agency had not received cancellations from any ships heading for Egypt.
“All 10 of our ports on the Red Sea, including Suez, are operating normally and cargo loading has not been affected by the ongoing events,” he said by telephone.
Separately, Dana Gas, the UAE-based gas exploration and production company, said yesterday its business in Egypt has not been affected by recent turmoil caused by six days of protests.
Dana Gas Egypt “is continuing with routine operations, and the production has not been affected by the current events in Egypt,” Dana Gas chief executive officer Ahmad al-Arbeed said.