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The Container Ship That Blocked Suez Canal Is Set To Sail On Wednesday

NOEL KING, HOST:

The very large container ship that blocked Egypt's Suez Canal for more than a week back in March will start sailing again tomorrow. It took a massive salvage effort to free it, and the ship's Japanese owners have agreed to pay the Suez Canal Authority. Here's NPR's Joanna Kakissis.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

OSAMA RABIE: (Non-English language spoken).

JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: The Suez Canal Authority's chairman, Osama Rabie, told a private Egyptian television channel that he won't reveal how much compensation was paid in the deal. The two parties signed a non-disclosure agreement.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RABIE: (Non-English language spoken).

KAKISSIS: Rabie praised the deal as important, saying it will preserve ties with the company and Japan. But Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a shipping analyst for Lloyd's List, is troubled that there are so few public details about this deal as well as the incident and the investigation into it.

MICHELLE WIESE BOCKMANN: Well, first of all, we need to know how it happened. I mean, these ships are worth tens of millions of dollars, and the trade that's upon (ph) them is worth - you know, one container ship the size of the Ever Given carries about, you know, 700 million to a billion dollars' worth of cargo. So we need to know why this happened.

KAKISSIS: Bockmann is also concerned that the Suez Canal Authority initially demanded $900 million in compensation.

BOCKMANN: Huge, unrealistic sums of money - so all of the questions that in any other industry would be raising alarm bells and people would want to be finding the answers to.

KAKISSIS: Nevertheless, the Suez Canal Authority is planning to hold a ceremony on the signing of this deal tomorrow.

For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis.

(SOUNDBITE OF ...OF SINKING SHIPS' "IT'S EASIER WITH NO DESTINATION") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Joanna Kakissis is a foreign correspondent based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she reports poignant stories of a conflict that has upended millions of lives, affected global energy and food supplies and pitted NATO against Russia.