Supertanker Hijacked By Pirates Fully Loaded With Crude

The owner of a Saudi supertanker, which was hijacked by Somali pirates several hundred miles out to sea, says the 25 crew on board are safe and the ship is fully loaded with crude.

Vela International Marine Ltd, a Dubai based company, said response teams have been established and are working to ensure the release of the crew and vessel, which was seized by pirates on Saturday.

Two Britons are among the crew of the Sirius Star, which was captured 450 miles south-east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The US navy, which has been tracking the ship, said last night it was close to anchoring in the notorious pirate haven of Eyl on Somalia's north-east coast.

"Both the size of the vessel and the distance from the coast where the hijackers struck is unprecedented," said Commander Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. "It shows how quickly the pirates are adapting."

Another spokesman, Lieutenant Nate Christensen, said: "We don't know the condition of the crew on board or the nature of the pirates' demands. In cases like this what we typically see is a demand for money from the ship owners but we haven't had that yet. We don't know exactly where they are taking it but we know the town of Eyl is a pirate stronghold."

Eyl is in the northern Puntland region of Somalia and has become notorious for pirate activity. A regional maritime group also said today that the supertanker, which is carrying up to 2m barrels of oil worth about $100m, had been seen off the coast of north Somalia.

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

Nato and other international warships have increased patrols around northern Somalia to try to deter the heavily armed Somali pirate gangs who have seriously disrupted one of the world busiest shipping lanes. The pirates are holding about a dozen vessels hostage and more than 200 foreign crew. They are believed to have already netted more than £20m in ransoms this year.

Most of the captured ships were attacked in the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. But the seizure of the Sirius Star, a new ship more than 300 meters long and weighing three times as much as a typical aircraft carrier, took place in unpatrolled waters, hundreds of miles south of Somalia, at a latitude intersecting with Tanzania.

Owned by Saudi Aramco, the state-run oil company, the ship was on course to sail around the Cape of Good Hope to the US when it was seized on Saturday. The oil on board represents more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output. News of the hijacking caused the price of oil to jump by more than a dollar a barrel.

The US navy would not comment on a possible rescue operation, saying only that it was evaluating the situation.

A spokesman for the Royal Navy said he could not say whether British servicemen were involved in any attempts to rescue the vessel. "It is our policy not to discuss operational matters," he said.

The Foreign Office confirmed that two Britons were on board the ship. The other seamen are from Croatia, Poland, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. The pirates seldom harm crew members as they wait for ransoms to be paid.

In a typical pirate attack a gang of young Somali men in a high-powered speedboat ambush a passing ship, firing automatic weapons and even rocket propelled grenades if an order to stop is ignored. But Captain Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), said that the distance from the shore where the Sirius Star was attacked meant that the pirates must have launched their skiff from a "mother ship" they had previously seized.

"The huge size of a vessel does not seem to daunt the pirates," he said. "It shows their high degree of audacity and resources."

The hijacking is likely to send shudders through the shipping industry. Insurance premiums for companies using the Gulf of Aden have soared this year as Somalia leapt to the top of world piracy charts. So lucrative is the crime - a typical western-owned ship can fetch more than £1m - that there are now at least five Somali pirate gangs employing more than 1,000 gunmen, according to the East African Seafarers' Association in Mombasa.

Between July and September there were 47 attacks off Somalia's coast, the longest in Africa, and 26 were successful. But the attack on the Sirius Star shows that the pirates' reach now extends far beyond Somali waters.

The US navy said that shipping firms were partly to blame for the hijackings. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, said that 10 out of 15 of the most recent attacks around Somalia involved ships that had ignored the IMB's advice to stay about 250 miles away from the coast or had failed to employ security guards on board.

"Companies don't think twice about using security guards to protect their valuable facilities ashore," he said. "Protecting valuable ships and their crews at sea is no different."

Graeme Gibbon Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd, said the pirates probably did not know how much oil the ship was carrying. "They have hit the jackpot," he said.

Attacks

These are just a few of the pirate attacks in and around the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of east Africa so far this year:

April 4 Pirates storm luxury French yacht Le Ponant, taking 32 crew and passengers captive. Ransom paid.

April 20 Pirates armed with grenade launchers hijacked a Spanish tuna boat, Playa de Bakio, and its 26 crew.

September 4 Egyptian vessel Al Mansoura, carrying cement, and its crew of 25 hijacked in the Gulf of Aden.

September 16 Members of Commando Hubert, French equivalent of the Special Boat Service, storm the yacht of a French couple captured by pirates off Somalia. One suspected pirate killed.

September 25 Ukrainian cargo ship MV Faina hijacked. It was carrying military hardware, including grenade launchers and Russian-made tanks.

November 11 British commandos kill two pirates from crew attempting to seize Danish ship in Gulf of Aden.