Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is a sea-level canal through Egypt connecting the Mediterranean at Port Said with the Red Sea at Suez. By eliminating the voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, it shortens the Europe–Asia route by thousands of miles — around nine days’ steaming for a typical containership — making it, with Panama, Hormuz, and Malacca, one of the defining chokepoints of world trade. In normal years it carries on the order of 10–12% of global trade volume.

History

Built under Ferdinand de Lesseps’ concession and opened in 1869, the canal passed under effective British control within decades. Egypt’s President Nasser nationalized it in 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis; it closed again from 1967 to 1975 after the Six-Day War, stranding fourteen ships (“the Yellow Fleet”) in the Great Bitter Lake for eight years. The closure years pushed the industry toward the giant tankers of the 1970s, built to make the Cape route pay.

The modern canal

The canal has no locks — it is a sea-level cut roughly 193 km long — and has been progressively deepened to accommodate vessels up to the Suezmax envelope (about 20.1 m draft), which today admits laden VLCCs only partially loaded but takes the largest containerships. A 2015 expansion added a 35 km parallel channel, allowing two-way transit along part of the route and raising capacity. The canal is operated by the Suez Canal Authority, and transit dues are a principal source of Egyptian foreign exchange.

Vulnerability

Two recent episodes underlined the canal’s strategic weight. In March 2021 the 20,000-TEU containership Ever Given grounded diagonally across the southern section, blocking all traffic for six days and backing up hundreds of ships. From late 2023, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea drove much of the container and gas trade back around the Cape of Good Hope for an extended period, cutting canal transits and revenues sharply — a reminder that the route’s value depends on security at both ends.