The Situation in the Bosporus Strait is not Comparable to the Suez Canal
1/20/2023
The Catorone vessel carried out pipe laying work at great depths. Six months ago, it passed through the Bosphorus and headed for the Black Sea. On January 16, in the morning, a cargo ship blocked the strait in Istanbul, running aground.
By the evening of January 16, the ship was taken off the shoal. But, according to media reports, the queue of ships waiting to pass through the Bosporus Strait from south to north stretched for tens of kilometers along the coast of the Sea of Marmara.
“Temporary blocking of the Bosporus Strait will not lead to a critical situation”, Alexey Lipatov, Executive Director of ACEX, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
"The Suez Canal is a more intense strait, its blockage has been prolonged. In this case, the Bosphorus was closed for the operation to remove the bulk carrier from the shoal, that is, the possibility of passing other vessels remains. This channel is wider than the Suez Canal, and ships move much less along it," Lipatov commented on the situation.
As you can see on the map, the place where the ship ran aground is quite wide, so the situation in the Suez Canal, which was blocked by the stranded ship Ever Given on March 23, will not happen again. It will not be possible to turn the ship sideways and close everything, Lipatov noted.