Somali Pirates Take a Massive Haul of Saudi Oil

Somali pirates, growing ever more ambitious as they patrol the shipping lanes off the coast of East Africa, took their largest haul to date this past weekend, hijacking a Saudi supertanker loaded with crude oil over one hundred miles off the coast. In the process, the modern day swashbucklers defeated the security warships patrolling the area and doing so further offshore than ever before. The captured supertanker, the MV Sirius Star, is a new tanker that supports a 25-member crew. It was seized on Saturday morning over 450 nautical miles from the coast of Kenya.

No specifics were offered about the hijacking, but in the past pirates have used small speedboats to travel the shipping lanes and board ships via rope ladders before crew members on the target ships are aware of their presence. The MV Sirius Star features a deck that is 30 feet above the water, making the attack all the more daunting for would-be marauders. Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, noted that "It’s the largest ship we’ve seen hijacked and one attacked farthest out on the sea." Christensen went on to say that this incident shows a "fundamental shift in the ability of pirates to be able to attack merchant vessels."

The attacks are nothing new, however, and they have increased more than 75% over the course of the year as the brigands have grown bolder and stepped up the violence. While some potential targets have used armed forces as guards, using high power fire hoses to remove the pirates from the ship in a non-lethal manner, the pirates have responded. They are utilizing satellite phones, GPS, automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades to take down their prey in this modern day age of piracy. There has been no word on any actions to protect shipping in the area beyond an EU plan to run anti-piracy patrols off Somalia beginning next month, and U.S. Navy officials have noted in the past that the area in question is too large to be adequately patrolled by government forces alone, raising the prospect of private security firms making further headway in the area as pirate fighters.