Choke Points

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Choke Points

Postby ROB » Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:35 am

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy ... 5b0907361e

Cargo ship stuck in Suez Canal is 400m-long, 16m-deep and not moving
A cargo ship the length of the Empire State Building remains trapped in the world’s most important shipping lane. This is how long it could be there.


Rohan Smith
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MARCH 25, 20213:25PM
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Oil prices have surged more than five per cent overnight after a container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal – one of the world's busiest shipping…
There is a temptation to view the stranding of giant cargo ship the Ever Given in comical terms. You’ve probably seen the memes already.

Or maybe you’ve taken the deep dive into the wacky conspiracy theory pedalled by Qanon that the 200-tonne, 400m vessel is being used for child sex trafficking by Hillary Clinton.

Yes, that really is a conversation being had on messageboards among conspiracy theorists.

Or perhaps you were drawn in by the gigantic, crude rendering of the male anatomy that eagle-eyed shipwatchers pointed out when analysing the ship’s path through the Red Sea.

All of that is a distraction from the reality that the situation has implications for far flung parts of the world.

To put into context what it means to have the container ship blocking the narrow strait that connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, you first have to understand why the Suez Canal is so important.

A giant container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal after a gust of wind blew it off course. Picture: Marina Passos/AFP
A giant container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal after a gust of wind blew it off course. Picture: Marina Passos/AFPSource:AFP

According to researchers from the University of Plymouth, as much as 90 per cent of the world’s trade is transported by sea.

“The Suez Canal is the gateway for the movement of goods between Europe and Asia, and it was responsible for the transit of over 19,000 ships in 2019, equating to nearly 1.25 billion tonnes of cargo,” they researchers wrote in an analysis published by The Conversation.

“This is thought to represent around 13 per cent of world trade so any blockage is likely to have a significant impact.



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“The Suez Canal Authority started expanding the strait in 2014 to raise its daily capacity from 49 vessels at present to 97 by 2023. This gives an indication of how many ships are likely to be affected by the current situation.

“There are reports that the incident has already halted the passage of ten crude tankers carrying 13 million barrels of oil, and that any ships rerouted will have 15 days added to their voyage.”

A satellite handout shows the ship lodged sideways and impeding all traffic across the waterway of Egypt's Suez Canal. Picture: Planet Labs/AFP
A satellite handout shows the ship lodged sideways and impeding all traffic across the waterway of Egypt's Suez Canal. Picture: Planet Labs/AFPSource:AFP

According to Bloomberg, 600,000 barrels of crude oil flow from the Middle East to Europe and the US via the Suez Canal every single day.

Individual vessel owners who cannot wait for the Ever Given to be painstakingly refloated now have a tough choice on their hands.

They can travel around South Africa, but a voyage to London that was originally travelling through the Suez Canal will be delayed by at least 10 days.

Part of the problem with attempts to shift the massive ship — so long it measures front to back the same distance from bottom to top of the Empire State Building — is the sheer scale of it.

It is 400m long, 59m wide and 16m deep below the waterline. It can carry 18,000 containers. The researchers from Plymouth University say it could take “potentially a lot of time” before the vessel is unwedged from its position.

In the meantime, excavators and tug boats worked on Wednesday to free the ship after a stranding that authorities blamed on a freak sandstorm.

Taiwan-owned MV Ever Given, a 400m-long, 59m-wide vessel, lodged sideways in the world’s busiest canal. Picture: Suez Canal/AFP
Taiwan-owned MV Ever Given, a 400m-long, 59m-wide vessel, lodged sideways in the world’s busiest canal. Picture: Suez Canal/AFPSource:AFP

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said the stranded ship was caught up in a gale-force sandstorm, a common occurrence in Egypt’s Sinai desert at this time of year, which blotted out light and limited the captain’s ability to see.

It was “mainly due to the lack of visibility due to the weather conditions when winds reached 40 knots, which affected the control” of the ship, the SCA said.

The Taiwan-run, Panama-flagged vessel is blocking at least 100 ships in the narrow channel that divided continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula in Northern Egypt.

Ranjith Raja, head of MENA oil & shipping at Refinitiv, said “we’ve never seen anything like this before”.

“It’s likely that resulting congestion will take several days to weeks to clear as it is expected to have a ripple effect on the other convoys, schedules and global markets.”

He noted that oil prices soared on Wednesday as the ship remained stuck in the canal.

Estimates suggest the price of world oil surged 4.6 per cent.

— with AFP
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Re: Choke Points

Postby Kurt » Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:23 pm

Choke points are always those things that run in the background that no one thinks about.

Shipping.
Container loading and unloading
Tracking equipment of the containers and what is inside. Imagine if all data was lost on every container contained in every shipment done by ... lets say Maersk.. Which is what nearly happened when they were hit by ransomware a few years ago. Maersk thanked the IT Team in London who worked days without sleep to recover that data by laying them off and outsourcing their work.
Weather forecasting.
Dredging equipment.
Industrial lubricants.

The QAnon theory is especially funny since it shows their lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation. They know something BAD happened but cannot understand it without placing it in context of their own world so an event that will fuck up the global supply chain of goods for 1 week or more becomes "Hilary Clinton's sex trafficking container ship has run aground".
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Re: Choke Points

Postby snaark » Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:10 pm

I'm sure there's a dick joke in there somewhere, but I'm not witty enough to find it. I guess that comes from living in Germany too long.
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Re: Choke Points

Postby Kurt » Thu Mar 25, 2021 6:54 pm

snaark wrote:I'm sure there's a dick joke in there somewhere, but I'm not witty enough to find it. I guess that comes from living in Germany too long.


Dredging Lubricants?

Those exist actually but it is called Slurry.
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Re: Choke Points

Postby Dabbi » Tue Apr 06, 2021 1:00 pm

Choke point is the perfectly balanced point of choking yourself as you are masturbating reaching the highest level of autoerotic ashpyxiation bringing you closer to God.
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Re: Choke Points

Postby ROB » Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:13 am

AKA the "danger wank"
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easy jokes

Postby el3so » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:33 pm

Dabbi wrote:perfectly balanced point of choking yourself as you are masturbating (...) bringing you closer to God.

You'll definitely meet your God if performing this particular sex act in excess.
skynet prompt: witty line, a bit offensive, medium levels of spelling error, Rastafy by 10 % or so
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