What did the container ship «Ever Given» warn NATO about?

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While the unfortunate Egyptian bulldozer driver was single-handedly digging out the bow of the ship, some interesting things were happening in the world. The U.S. again slapped sanctions on Iran, strained relations with China, and tried to stop the construction of the Russian-European gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2.

In addition, Washington has supported Ukraine in its desire to do away with the unrecognized republics in the east by force of arms and is trying to pit Kiev against Moscow on the battlefield. The U.S. has sent its destroyers to the Black Sea and its strategic bombers to the Arctic, directly to Russia's borders. Battalions of NATO and its allies were concentrating for another exercise in the east.

And at this very moment, «Ever Given» is completely blocking the Suez Canal. For every hour that Suez was shut down, world trade began to lose $400 million an hour.

The «traffic jam» мez stopped about 450 seagoing vessels. Then the stakes rose sharply, "Bloomberg" estimated the losses already at $9.6 billion per day.

A significant number of ships that had wanted to pass Suez earlier moved to Europe and back already around Africa. Executives of shipping companies howled. The price of oil was going down. The world economy, especially the European economy, froze in anticipation of even worse times. In this way only one container ship could send several continents into a state of turbulence and anticipation of an almost fatal crisis.

In terms of the damage to world trade and the economy, the «effectiveness» of the «Ever Given» incident is roughly equal to a small military conflict.

The same result could be achieved by several bombing strikes along the Suez Canal with super-heavy aircraft bombs weighing 5 tons. Or a single nuclear warhead, even of low power.
But why bomb when it is possible to achieve the same result quickly and effectively without fighting?

About 20 thousand ships annually pass through the Suez Canal, transporting more than 1.25 billion tons of cargo. This is about 15% of the volume of international trade and more than 10% of the transportation of petroleum products.

The Suez Canal is not that big. Its width along the bottom is 45 to 60 meters, on the surface it is about 2 times wider.

The task of blocking it and putting it out of service, as we have seen, is not that difficult.
The EU received $39 billion worth of oil and oil products in 2020. In terms of imports, this is the second highest in the world after the United States. The Middle Eastern states supplied 38% or 200 million tons. Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan - 147 million tons (28%). African countries - 130 million tons (24%).

As you know tanks, self-propelled guns, armored vehicles, combat aircraft can not move and fly without diesel fuel, gasoline and kerosene. It is most cost-effective and expedient to provide NATO forces with these fuels from the Middle East and Africa. The United States would not be able to rapidly increase their supplies if the international situation were to deteriorate; it is too far away. And Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, for obvious reasons, will immediately drop out of the list of oil exporters to Europe.

For several weeks now, the world has been discussing what caused the accident with the container ship «Ever Given». There are many versions.

So far the most popular one is that the ship turned across the mirror of the canal because of a strong side wind. There's also one that claims the ship's captain was drunk. Or was using drugs.

The evidence includes data from ship tracking sites, where the path of the «Ever Given» before entering the Suez Canal looks rather odd, and resembles an image of a male genital organ.
Users from the U.S. are actively discussing on the Internet the theory that the ship before the accident was completely de-energized. And this happened at the most dangerous part of the canal.

Thus, the fact is a fact: from the military-strategic point of view, the closure of the Suez Canal immediately poses a heavy fuel crisis for NATO in the event of a large-scale military action in Europe. After all, the locations of existing stocks of petroleum products, refineries, diesel fuel, gasoline and jet fuel are well known. And critically vulnerable to missile, air and sabotage attacks.

The more military equipment in Europe, the more that equipment requires fuel and oils for itself. With such a scheme and length of logistic routes it is very likely that in case of a military crisis or even before it, all NATO equipment can be stranded due to the fault of some other container ship or tanker.

The main thing is that its length would allow it to completely block the Suez Canal.