Posted on 11/17/2008 5:37:30 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Somali pirates hijacked a large oil tanker owned by Saudi Arabian Oil Co. off the coast of Kenya, in one of the most daring attacks on a merchant vessel in the region, the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said.
The tanker, Sirius Star, operated by Vela International, was more than 450 nautical miles (833 kilometers) southeast of Mombasa when a group of pirates managed to scale the 10-meter (32-foot) high side of the ship, Lieutenant Nate Christensen said in a phone interview from Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is based.
Sirius Star, designed to carry more than 2 million barrels of crude, ``is three times the size of a U.S. aircraft carrier and shows how they are successfully expanding their operations,'' Christensen said, adding that previous attacks have occurred within 200 nautical miles of land.
The crew of 25 includes citizens of Croatia, the U.K., the Philippines, Poland, and Saudi Arabia, Christensen said. He said he believed the ship was carrying crude oil. Further information wasn't immediately available and telephones at the International Maritime Bureau and Saudi Aramco weren't being answered.
Piracy in the Gulf of Aden, between Yemen and Somalia, has more than doubled in 2008, with assailants using the global positioning system and satellite phones to find potential targets, according to an October report by the London-based research organization Chatham House.
Combating Piracy
The European Union agreed on Oct. 10 to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, India, Malaysia and Russia in deploying vessels to combat piracy. About 11 percent of the world's seaborne petroleum, on its way to the Suez Canal or regional refineries, passes through the Gulf of Aden.
The seizure is the first of a very large crude carrier, or VLCC, on record, Mark Jenkins, an analyst at Simpson, Spence & Young Ltd., the world's second-largest shipbroker, said by phone, adding the attack was ``probably opportunistic.''
Failure to increase the protection of its fleet would likely ``compromise'' Saudi Aramco's ability to sell oil to customers in the U.S. and Europe, Jenkins said.
``Even if you've got to spend quite a lot of money, it's going to be a worthwhile investment if the alternative is you can't sell the oil as readily as you would otherwise aim to do,'' he said.
You said — “f these guys did not get permission from the Saudi’s in advance for this attack, they are playing with fire. The Saudis could lose patience and cut off the funding for their little “Islamic Paradise”, and that will be the end of that.”
Well..., you’ve forgotten that the Saudis want to reduce the output of oil to the world, so they can *raise* the price of oil once again (after its free-fall). So, if these pirates hold that oil off the market until the reduction in supplies doubles the price once again — the pirates will have made the Saudis a nice profit... LOL...
Post 21 quoted an article, saying...
Failure to increase the protection of its fleet would likely ``compromise’’ Saudi Aramco’s ability to sell oil to customers in the U.S. and Europe, Jenkins said.
And there you have it..., the type of item that easily *raises the price* of oil to markets — exactly what the Saudis are trying to accomplish (since the price of oil has already gone down below their price-mark...).
Note that this tanker would be too large for the Suez Canal.
Well, as far as I am concerned, I hope this is an unauthorized act, and the Saudis wind up losing their shirts.
The disaster in Somalia was a Saudi Op from Day 1. I had the great pleasure of being in Somalia back in the Mid 80s, as the Barre regime was failing, and things started getting... unpleasant. Mogadishu was a somewhat uncomfortable, but peaceful backwater back then. Then, suddenly, every idiot kid in town traded in his rusty WWII Italian relic rifle for a brand shiny new AK-47, with ammunition out the ying/yang, and Mogadishu became a much less fun place to be.
The AKs were a gift from Saudi Arabia. They have been arming the Islamists in Somalia ever since. If their pet tiger has now come back an bit them on the butt, I’m OK with that.
GreenPeace will take care of this situation!
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She’s probably already there ... or is she? ;) (former bubblehead here)
This oil tanker could be a "the PEA" in a political shell game.. and the "Somali pirates" could be the scam artists.. for and even bigger Mafia.. of some sort.. Not all is often what it seems to be..
Why can’t the major world powers clean out these pirates? A simple shoot on sight policy would end the problem quickly. Perhaps even using a heavily armed merchant vessel as a “Trojan horse” to lure the pirates to their doom.
A Saudi Ship in international waters...
Let them send in their own Seal Team.
Please provide sources for those statements. You are as bad as the MSM in providing unsourced allegations
I’ve always wanted to be a pirate.
They really do not want to. For varous reasons and because they [those in power] really don’t give a damn if a bunch of innocent people who are interested in making a living are killed or captured and sold into slavery. And last but not least, we have became “civilized” we do not kill criminals. We only kill the innocent.
No, the Viking Kitties are far too important to be risked on a saving a Saudi Ship.
Yargggghhhhhhhhhh!
It’s very interesting and a good commentary on the value of each respective society, Islamic and “Judeo-Christian...
In the Islamic, it’s a *devolution* to war and killing and destruction. Their societies always *devolve* into chaos, death and destruction, when Islam is given free reign.
On the other hand, the “West” has been an example (even *in spite of* their own wars and killing) of “evolving” into life, well-being and prosperity (apart from the recent “infiltration” of Islam into western nations). That’s something that even the Islamist, individually want for themselves and families (on a personal level, anyway) — but — they bring their own choas, death, and destruction, into the societies where they go, because they believe and adhere to the evil and false religion of Islam (and the false prophet, Mohammed).
My sources are my own observations. One day, I had a rusty Mauser pointed in my ear by my friendly neighborhood “toll booth” kid, and the next day I had a brand new AK pointed in my ear by the same kid, and the price of the toll went up.
Somalia was dependent on Saudi largesse back then. If the Saudis sent fuel, you had fuel. If they withheld fuel, you didn’t. Same with everything else. Then they stopped sending fuel and started sending guns, and the wheels came off.
I don’t have sources. We didn’t have newspapers or anything like that. Every now and again you could get your hands on a week-old International Herald Tribune, but they had no idea what was going on, either. Everything was scuttlebutt, and 90% of it was wrong. But the source of the guns was one of the firmer bits of information available.
BTW, how are the Caterpillars doing this year? All red?
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