The Suez Canal chief said authorities are negotiating a financial settlement with the owners of a massive vessel that blocked the crucial waterway for nearly a week.

Lieutenant General Osama Rabie said he hoped talks with Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd, the Japanese owner of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given, will conclude without a lawsuit.

“We are discussing with them a peaceful resolution to the matter without resorting to the judiciary,” he said.

He maintained that bringing the case before a court would be more harmful to the firm than settling with the canal’s management.

The canal chief said last week the Suez Canal Authority was expecting more than one billion US dollars in compensation, warning the ship would not be allowed to leave the canal if the issue of damages turns into a legal dispute.

That amount takes into account the salvage operation, costs of stalled traffic and lost transit fees for the week that the Ever Given blocked the canal. He did not specify then who would be responsible for paying the compensation.

The massive cargo ship is currently in one of the canal’s holding lakes, where authorities and the ship’s managers say an investigation is ongoing.

Lt Gen Rabie also said that investigators have analysed data from the Voyage Data Recorder, also known as a vessel’s black box, but no conclusion had yet been reached on what led the Ever Given to run aground.

Last week, salvage teams freed the Ever Given, ending a crisis that had clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways and halted billions of dollars a day in maritime commerce.

The Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe ran aground on March 23 in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Asian Sinai Peninsula.

Its bow was touching the eastern wall, while its stern looked lodged against the western wall, an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of happening in the canal’s 150-year history.

“The case that we had was complicated and non-traditional, so there should have been a non-traditional solution,” Lt Gen Rabie said.

He said they relied on dredgers to remove sand from underneath the hulking vessel.

Then, a flotilla of tugboats, aided by the tides, wrenched the bulbous bow of Ever Given from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been firmly lodged.

The unprecedented six-day shutdown, which raised fears of extended delays, goods shortages and rising costs for consumers, added to strain on the shipping industry already under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic.