Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage

Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by sen on Sunday April 04, 2021 @06:37AM (#26688317)

It's most probably just for show, as they'd have a tough time of actually finding them guilty considering the state of the canal. They'll bluster about huge damages, then "settle for an undisclosed amount" which is realistically more like just the costs of the fix itself, and maybe a bit extra for compensation.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by madaxe_again on Sunday April 04, 2021 @07:20AM (#26688536)

Absolutely. They see an opportunity to make some revenue, and they will. This is, in the nicest possible way, the way business is done in Egypt. You start from an absolutely outrageous position, and settle on something both parties are generally happy with. This applies from billion dollar lawsuits to buying a pack of cigarettes. Haggling is an art form there.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by f6v on Sunday April 04, 2021 @07:32AM (#26688622)

I got an impression that any lawsuit goes like that everywhere. A claimant asks for outrageously high compensation and settles for much less.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by ARandomerDude on Sunday April 04, 2021 @02:33PM (#26691742)

> This applies from billion dollar lawsuits to buying a pack of cigarettes. Haggling is an art form there.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by elcritch on Sunday April 04, 2021 @05:44PM (#26693102)

Some sellers in markets in the region will get offended if you don’t try and haggle, even it means they’ll make 10x the profit that they’d settle for.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by manquer on Sunday April 04, 2021 @06:18PM (#26693326)

It is not the about the money.

Traders would sometimes take a hit even for a good argument. There is no fun in making 10x money that way. They want to earn it.

You will find such traders in all over West Asia/arabic world like Egypt, Istanbul and as far off as delhi, not everyone is like that however, plenty will straight up cheat.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by SergeAx on Sunday April 04, 2021 @04:05PM (#26692418)

Do you have even anecdotal example of this behavior on industrial level, or just projecting your own touristic experience?

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by madaxe_again on Monday April 05, 2021 @05:26AM (#26696921)

Yes - my business provided ecommerce infrastructure for a major Egyptian brand. The negotiations were... actually rather fun. It all started by phone and email, they tried to rip us off, we poked fun at their attempts, and returned in kind. Ultimately I flew out to Alexandria and after an afternoon of Very Serious Business we shook on it, and became best friends.

Elsewhere, there’s always a degree of horse trading, but the focus is on getting the deal done - here, the focus was very much on doing the deal. The negotiations over terms were far more of an assessment of us than the RFQ and the pitch were, whereas with western brands, the inverse is true.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by manquer on Sunday April 04, 2021 @06:23PM (#26693353)

It has nothing to do with cultural reasons. Every lawsuit in the U.S. and other places does the exact same thing, claim very high numbers, then perhaps settle for much less.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by mastax on Sunday April 04, 2021 @01:03PM (#26691068)

Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions, but wouldn't such a lawsuit be filed in an Egyptian court? It could be very easy to find them guilty. In the article the port authority is already holding the ship hostage for the money, and they could easily bar Evergreen from using the canal if they don't pay up. What motivation do they have to negotiate?

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by ivan_gammel on Sunday April 04, 2021 @01:28PM (#26691274)

I doubt that the contract between the company operating the ship and the canal authority includes the settlement of disputes in Egyptian court. If it goes this way, the company may seek for compensation abroad - this will damage the reputation of Egypt and result in a very long and difficult litigations everywhere around the world.

Besides that, new risks associated to this route may push shippers to look more closely to an alternative route. Northern route is much shorter, does not have vessel size limits and it becomes more easier to navigate with global warming. It's not hard to imagine ice class nuclear merchant ships carrying 30-40k TEU there in 10 years.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by gpm on Sunday April 04, 2021 @01:34PM (#26691327)

> nuclear merchant ships [...] in 10 years.

This is very hard for me to imagine.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by ivan_gammel on Sunday April 04, 2021 @02:36PM (#26691759)

They already exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

The only question is if it is economically viable at current level of technology.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by nbdfml354 on Sunday April 04, 2021 @02:02PM (#26691521)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker

Imagine one of these with stuff on it.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by WJW on Sunday April 04, 2021 @02:53PM (#26691871)

I imagine that it's not so much the "nuclear ship" part as much as it is the "nuclear merchant ship" part. Of course you can build big nuclear-powered vessels. But how many governments are willing to part with enough uranium to power such a vessel? Civilian use of nuclear material is extremely restricted and enforcement of maritime law is already something of a problem area due to how international the whole thing is.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by ivan_gammel on Sunday April 04, 2021 @04:11PM (#26692468)

Well, Russia already operates such fleet and generally considers it as the only feasible way to go with Northern route - to break ice you need a lot of power. I'm pretty sure China won't see a problem with admitting such vessels in their ports or even operating some on their own. With Northern route it's the only way to go in next 50 years, while Arctic is still fully freezing.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by xyzzy21 on Sunday April 04, 2021 @07:21PM (#26693713)

The United States did in 1959:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by Jeff_Brown on Monday April 05, 2021 @11:00AM (#26699927)

I'm not convinced Egypt's reputation matters much when a company is calculating whether to go through the Suez Canal vs. around South Africa? As long as the Suez is substantially cheaper, the only effect of this kind of tail risk will be in the cost of insurance.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by zelon88 on Monday April 05, 2021 @01:47AM (#26695712)

Evergreen is also probably facing liabilities from affected customers if the cargo were to never reach it's destination. It would apparently create the need for whoever is receiving the goods to perhaps negotiate with Egypt separately in such an event.

My guess is that if Egypt decides to push responsibility entirely on the ship's owners and operators then it would open itself up to more vocal criticism from other customers afraid of also being sued for mistakes caused by Suez being unfit.

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Re:Egypt demands over $1B in damages after Suez Canal blockage by posterboy on Sunday April 04, 2021 @01:32PM (#26691314)

They do have contracts and Terms of Service when there's a six figure number involved just to cross the channel. How the contracts are judged could indeed be a matter of jurisdiction, but the terms wont be nice to begin with.

At one billion I reckon its a matter of foreign relation so they won't be ripped off in a dark back alley.

And in return they receive protection from other claimants, who will have to bear their own risks no doubt.

Especially if it was force majeure as the GP implied.

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