Red Sea Cable Repairs Almost Complete

Seacom went live two days ago and EIG is now being repaired. The repairs revealed that an anchor damaged the cables and hence vindicate my theory that the Rubymar was responsible. Bloomberg quoted me on this issue shortly after the outages started The Houthis hit this ship with a missile and it dropped anchor so the crew could evacuate in life boats. It then drifted over 20 kilometers scrapping the sea floor with its huge anchor which probably weighs five to ten tons. Although Red Sea cables are usually buried, the sea floor is generally soft silt and a heavy anchor will simply sink through the silt and then plow it as the ship drifts. In general, most subsea outages around the world happen on the shallow continental shelf. That means shallow coastal waters where ships damage them via fishing or anchor dropping. Ships drop anchor to achieve a full stop, to stabilize it in transit during bad weather or steady it during an evacuation like the Rubymar. 

The real question surrounding the Red Sea debacle is whether the industry is prepared to change its ways. Is it ready to pay the higher prices for bypass routes? I don't think the Ameer, Iraq, or Iran routes are ready for prime time due to high prices, limited capacity, political instabilit and also Iran's pariah status. However, I do think that Blue-Raman will receive huge interest. Blue-Raman traverses Saudi Arabia to reach Jordan and cuts across Israel to reach Mediterranean cable landing stations. It is both a physical diversity play designed to reduce the Red and Egypt choke points and also a cost savings exercise since Telecom Egypt is charging huge transit fees. And the EAPC project to build conduit next to its oil pipeline will a big winner. The EAPC pipeline allows oil to flow from the Red Sea to Mediterranean port facilities. It bypasses Egypt and I expect it will become many intercontinetal cables to use for cost savings and resiliency. 

One possible bypass route is to hop from Mumbai or Oman onto 2Africa which can go around Africa and hand off in Lisbon, Genoa, Marseille or London. But I suspect the carriers will more likely to make a mental note, forget it about their Red Sea vulnerability, and simply take restoration capacity in bad times as opposed to leasing capacity for instant switchover. The European-Asian cables have a lot of costs including Egypt transit fees and Indonesian territorial water charges. Subsea cables are a target for economic opportunism despite the immense economic and social value they provide. It is partly a question of bypass expense and limited capacity and partly human inertia. Psychology has well documented that human decision making is biased. Routine and the past have a profound claim on our lives. I do not expect big changes short term in traffic routing due to the Red Sea fiasco. It will be gradual and be led by Google's Blue-Raman project. 

This link documents the sinking of the Rubymar which caused the Red sEa cable outages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NCXlC7Kn5Q