The Ever Given container ship that had blocked the Suez Canal in March left Egyptian waters at 4 a.m. local time following inspections at Port Said, a canal source said on Tuesday. Ship tracker MarineTraffic showed the Ever Given to be underway in the Mediterranean Sea north of the Egyptian coast. The ship were idle in the Egyptian waters for nearly four months before a compensation deal reached with the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority (SCA) on Wednesday. The 400-metre ship, which was refloated on 29 March by a fleet of Egyptian tugboats and diggers, was caught in a legal dispute linked to an initial $916 million compensation claim against the ship's Japanese owner. The SCA had demanded $916 million in compensation to cover salvage efforts, reputational damage, and lost revenue before publicly lowering the request to $550 million. During the signing ceremony of the deal on Wednesday, Khalid Abu-Bakr, the SCA's lawyer, said that the canal authority was committed to keeping the terms of the agreement confidential.
