Pirates hijack oil supertanker off east Africa

[dhulQarnayn]

By Raissa Kasolowsky and Simon Webb

 

DUBAI, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Somali pirates have captured a fully laden Saudi supertanker far off east Africa, seizing the biggest vessel ever hijacked with a cargo of oil worth over $100 million in an attack that pushed world crude prices higher.

 

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said the Sirius Star was being taken to the pirate haven of Eyl, in northern Somalia, on Monday.

 

The hijacking of the Saudi Aramco-owned vessel on Sunday is certain to add to pressure for concerted international action to tackle the growing threat posed by pirates from anarchic Somalia to one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

 

"This is unprecedented. It's the largest ship that we've seen pirated," said Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet. "It's three times the size of an aircraft carrier."

 

The Sirius Star held as much as two million barrels of oil -- more than one quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports. The hijacking helped lift global oil prices over $1 to more than $58 a barrel, although they later lost some gains.

 

The hijacking on Sunday, 450 nautical miles (830 km) southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, was in an area far beyond the Gulf of Aden, where most of the attacks on shipping have taken place and where foreign navies have begun patrols.

 

The pirates have been getting bolder.

 

The Sirius Star had been heading for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, skirting the continent instead of heading through the Gulf of Aden and then the Suez Canal.

 

The ship, at 318,000 deadweight tons, was the largest ever captured by pirates.

 

 

CHAOS SPAWNS PIRACY

 

There were no reports of damage, Christensen said. He declined to say if the U.S. navy was considering taking action to rescue the tanker, which had 25 crew from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

 

Chaos onshore in Somalia, where Islamist forces are fighting a Western-backed government, has spawned a wave of piracy. Shipowners have paid out millions of dollars in ransoms.

 

Northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, where Eyl is located, was on the lookout for the ship. Authorities there have said they can do little to stop ships being seized.

 

"It has not entered Puntland's waters so far," Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, the assistant minister for fisheries, told Reuters.

 

The International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog, said there had been 92 attacks off Somalia this year and 36 of the ships had been hijacked. Fourteen ships are still controlled by pirates and 243 crew members are being held.

 

"This is a very significant event because it is the largest vessel taken by far and also the distance away from Somalia is the highest, it shows the pirates are ranging very far from their base to take them," said IMB director Capt. Pottengal Mukundan.

 

The hijacks have driven up shipping insurance premiums and pushed some vessels to take longer routes between Asia and Europe than passing through the Suez Canal -- potentially increasing the cost of traded goods.

 

Among the vessels seized is one with 33 tanks on board.

 

British think-tank Chatham House warned in a report last month of the danger a tanker could come under attack.

 

"As pirates become bolder and use ever more powerful weaponry a tanker could be set on fire, sunk or forced ashore, any of which could result in an environmental catastrophe that would devastate marine and bird life for years to come," it said.

 

"The pirates' aim is to extort ransom payments and to date that has been their main focus; however, the possibility that they could destroy shipping is very real."

 

The NATO alliance and the European Union have scrambled to provide patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean waterways off Somalia. The United States and France, which have bases nearby, are also helping, while Russia has sent a warship too.

 

The Sirius Star is Liberian-flagged, and owned and operated by state oil giant Saudi Aramco's shipping unit Vela International. The vessel was launched in March. (Additional reporting by Luke Pachymuthu in Dubai, Abdiqani Hassan in Bossaso, Stefano Ambrogi and Dave Cutler in London, David Clarke in Nairobi; Editing by Giles Elgood)

[dhulQarnayn]

These guys are NOW simply asking for trouble...With the current global recession, these fools are playing with fire by interupting the world's energy supply lines.

 

dhulQarnayn :cool:

Republic Of California

[General Duke]

Crazy dudes but a huge tanker indeed. It made me laugh if Somali's were as good as posative things as they are at violence they would a true self sufficiant nation.

[dhulQarnayn]

Somalia's Growing Piracy Threat

William Pentland 11.17.08, 3:46 PM ET

 

Make no mistake about it: Amateur hour is over in the Gulf of Aden. Somalia's pirates are now playing in the big leagues. The very big leagues.

 

In their most audacious attack yet, Saturday they hijacked the MV Sirius Star, one of the world's largest oil tankers, laden with more than 2 million barrels of crude oil. The assault took place nearly 450 miles off the coast of the Horn of Africa.

 

The hijacking highlighted the vulnerability of even very large ships and pointed to widening ambitions and capabilities among ransom-hungry pirates who have carried out a surge of attacks this year off Somalia.

 

Saturday's hijacking of the Sirius Star occurred in the Indian Ocean far south of the zone patrolled by international warships in the busy Gulf of Aden shipping channel, which leads to and from the Suez Canal. A U.S. Navy spokesman told the Associated Press that the bandits were taking the ship and its 25-man crew to a Somali port that has become a haven for seized ships and bandits trying to force ransoms for them.

 

The tanker, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco, is one of the largest ships to sail the seas. It is 1,800 feet long, or about the length of an aircraft carrier, and can carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

 

Fully loaded, the ship's cargo could be worth about $100 million. But the pirates would have no way of selling crude and no way to refine it in Somalia, the AP said.

 

Last week, pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew members near Somalia. In September, Somali pirates captured a Ukrainian ship bound for Kenya that had a cargo of 33 T-72 tanks and other military equipment in the Gulf of Aden, a critical trade corridor linking the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. More than 70 shipping vessels have been attacked off the coast of Somalia in the past year. Eleven of those ships and more than 200 crew members are still being held for ransom.

 

Roughly 11% of the world's seaborne petroleum passes through the Gulf of Aden. If the incidents continue unabated, shipping vessels may opt to avoid the Gulf of Aden by taking the longer route to Europe and North America round South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, which would almost certainly drive up commodities prices.

 

"The Gulf of Aden is a vital international trade route, and it is intolerable for it to be disrupted by pirates in this way," Pottengal Mukundan, the director of the International Maritime Bureau recently told a Malaysian shipping publication.

 

While previous attacks have taken place within 200 nautical miles of land, the Sirius Star was hijacked roughly 450 miles southeast of Mogadishu, Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau. In addition, the targets have shifted from fairly insignificant to critically strategic resources. The seizure of the Sirius Star is the first hijacking of a very large crude carrier on record.

 

Foreign navies have begun patrolling the Gulf of Aden to rein in the pirate gangs off the coast of northern Somalia, but they have had only limited success. As a result, ship owners have seen insurance premiums for coverage of passage through the Straits of Aden climb from an average of $900 to $9,000.

 

It's bad news for shippers, but an opportunity for Blackwater Worldwide, the North Carolina-based private military contractor. The company is currently finalizing plans to dispatch the MV MacArthur, a 183-foot vessel with a crew of 14 and a helicopter pad, to the Gulf of Aden to provide escort services for ships in need of security.

 

"Billions of dollars of goods move through the Gulf of Aden each year," said Bill Matthews, executive vice president of Blackwater Worldwide, in a press release earlier this month. "We have been contacted by ship owners who say they need our help in making sure those goods get to their destination safely. The McArthur can help us accomplish that."

 

The mercenary outfit--founded by former Navy SEALs in 1997 and heavily involved in U.S. military efforts in Iraq--has tentative plans to build a small fleet of two or three anti-piracy vessels, each able to carry several dozen armed security personnel. Although the Blackwater vessels will not be armed, the crew will be.

 

--The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[dhulQarnayn]

Hijacked super tanker heading towards port in Somalia, U.S. Navy says

 

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- Pirates who hijacked a crude oil tanker off the coast of Kenya are approaching a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

 

The Sirius Star -- a crude "super tanker" flagged in Liberia and owned by the Saudi Arabian-based Saudi Aramco company -- was attacked on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.

 

The crew of 25, including British, Croatian, Polish, Filippino and Saudi nationals, are reported to be safe

 

U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet Cmdr. Jane Campbell said the super tanker weighs more than 300,000 metric tons and "is more than three times the size of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier."

 

Oil industry insiders say a tanker of this size can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil, and the ship's operator, Dubai-based Vela International Marine Ltd, says it is fully laden.

 

A U.S. Navy spokesman said the tanker is approaching Eyl, Somalia, on the Indian Ocean coast. It is routine procedure for pirates to take hijacked ships to shore, where they will keep them while they discuss negotiations.

 

A multinational naval force including vessels from the U.S., the UK and Russia has been patrolling the Indian Ocean waters seas near the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, following a sharp increase in pirate attacks in the region.

 

"It was attacked more than 450 nautical offshore of Mombasa. This means that the pirates are now operating in an area of over 1.1 million square miles. This is a measure of the determination of the pirates and ... a measure of how lucrative piracy could become," Campbell said.

 

Campbell said the Navy does not expect to dispatch a vessel to aide the super tanker because it does not have dangerous weapons aboard like the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with arms that was seized by pirates on September 25.

 

The UK Foreign Office confirmed two Britons were aboard and said it was seeking more information about the incident.

 

South Korean officials said on Sunday that armed gunmen hijacked a Japanese freighter and its 23-member crew off the coast of Somalia. The hijacking came as the Korean government was considering sending a warship to join those of other countries to combat piracy in the area.

 

A Russian patrol ship also thwarted an attack on a Saudi vessel.

 

Eleven vessels are currently being held by pirates hoping to secure ransoms for their release, according to The Associated Press. They include the MV Faina, which was hijacked along with 20 crew and a cargo of weapons and T-72 tanks.

 

Ninety percent of ships transiting the perilous seas are using a guarded corridor and there have been no hijackings inside the zone since it was set up on August 22, Danish Commodore Per Bigum Christensen told AP last week.

 

Around 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels pass along the crucial shipping route each year.

 

"Our presence in the region is helping deter and disrupt criminal attacks off the Somali coast, but the situation with the Sirius Star clearly indicates the pirates' ability to adapt their tactics and methods of attack" said U.S. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces.

 

"Piracy is an international crime that threatens global commerce. Shipping companies have to understand that naval forces can not be everywhere. Self protection measures are the best way to protect their vessels, their crews, and their cargo."

[dhulQarnayn]

 

Damn its a big ship.

[General Duke]

Super Tanker damn. How many of them are there?

[RedSea]

looool..waa balaayo dadkani.

[N.O.R.F]

Apparently it's been freed.

 

Saudi tanker hijacked by pirates

Agencies

Last updated: November 18, 2008, 09:16

 

 

Nairobi: A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo has reached the coast of north Somalia, a regional maritime group said on Tuesday.

 

"Some people are saying they have spotted a huge vessel off Eyl. It must be the supertanker," said Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Association.

 

However, Al Arabiya television said on Monday that the Sirius Star had been freed, citing an unnamed official Saudi source.

 

The US Navy, which earlier reported the hijacking, said it had no information that the vessel had been released.

 

Saudi Aramco, which owns the vessel, said it also had no knowledge of any release.

 

The oil supertanker was fully loaded headed to the US Gulf when hijacked off the east coast of Africa, shipping brokers said on Monday.

 

http://www.gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi_arabia/102 60393.html

[Jacaylbaro]

I don't think they will unless the crew paid them the ransom in cash on the spot ,,,,

[Abwaan]

Originally posted by J.a.c.a.y.l.b.a.r.o:

I don't think they will unless the crew paid them the ransom in cash on the spot ,,,,

loool...oo meesha ma lacag iyo shidaal baa wada saarnaa?

 

kolleey maanta shabaqa waxaa u galay another big chance but who knows waxay ka dheefayaan iyo sida xaal ku dhammaan doono. Waxaan la yaabay waaba la gartay in la yiraa burcad baddeedda Soomaalida baa lala dagaalayaa ee tolow midda qashinka ku shubtay oo maraakiibta warshadaha mallaaygu ku yaalaan wata miyaa lala dagaali?

[Resistance]

The game is getting too dangerious now.

Is time this pricay cases as seen as they are.

 

Clearly the powers that be have a hand in this and the implications of it are far reaching than any of us can comprehend.

 

Intially i think most Somalis supported the pirates as they were seen as the unoffical patrolers of the Somali coast but now days not only the number of hijackings have increased but also the size of the ships beings hijacked and the contents of this ships are not only valuable but are also politcally sensitive.

 

Some have longed susbected that these pirates were nothing but agents of the US/uk/frace/russia ( take ur pick) and that the speed boats required to catch a ship that is so far off the coast of Somalia was provided for them but not to mention technical knowledge.

 

The gain for the main players is clear that now they have an excuse to set up base on one of the the most strategic and lucrative streth of waters in the world. The UN has and will further give legal ligitimacy for the presense of American/EU warships in the coast of Somalia and hence deprive us of what would have our most economical as well as Political bargaining power once a functioning authority is set up in Somalia

 

Later on is clear that powers ( US etc. ) will not leave the new bases that are bound to set up as a result of this increaced piracy as their arguments will be that Somalia cannot patrol these waters and the pirates will return.

 

At least we can take some heart that Russia/China may see the plan of the US before it cooks up and may spoil for them.

 

And I do hope someone can tell the few greedy Somalis that are partaking in this game to realise how dangerious it is for the future of Somalia in the long run.

[Jacaylbaro]

Even if they want to use force, they can't attack this one coz the whole sea will be gone.