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Efforts on to release supertanker

DUBAI: Contact has been established between the Somali pirates and the owners of the oil supertanker that was hijacked off the Kenyan coast on Sunday.

According to the spokesperson of the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet, which has been monitoring the movement of the 330-metre-long tanker, Sirius Star, pirates have taken the ship to their stronghold of Eyl along Somalia’s coast. The Dubai-based Vela International Marine Ltd., which operates the tanker, said crisis teams had been established to seek the release to the 25 crew members on board the ship. The crew consists of two British, two Polish, one Croatian, one Saudi and 19 Philippines nationals.

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it was “awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel.” This is the first occasion when a supertanker, with a cargo of 2 million barrels of oil valued at $100 million, has been pirated.

The hijack triggered on Monday a jump in oil prices. It is also for the first time that a large vessel has been hijacked, so far away from the coast — 450 nautical miles from the Kenyan shoreline. The supertanker, three times larger than an American aircraft carrier, is owned by Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Aramco. Analysts say piracy in the Gulf of Aden had already begun to hit international trade along the Suez Canal, with shippers starting to prefer the longer and costlier route around the Cape of Good Hope.

On Monday, Norwegian shipping company Odfjell said it would no longer sail its 92 ships through the piracy prone Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, further north. However, the latest hijacking could also jeopardise shipping along the Cape route. The Sirius Star, when hijacked, was sailing along the Cape route, and was bound for St. Eustatius in the Caribbean Sea.

Alarmed by the dramatic escalation in piracy, Saudi Arabia has called for collective action to fight the menace.

In Athens, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal said “piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together.”

However, the U.S.-led NATO, which has warships in the area, appears reluctant so far to use force to free the ship. “NATO’s mandate is not related to interception of hijacked ships outside the patrol area,” said the alliance’s spokesman James Appathurai.

“I’m not aware that there’s any intention by NATO to try and intercept this ship,” he added.

Observers say the piracy could trigger a major environmental crisis, in case the giant ship ran aground due to poor navigation in shallow waters close to the Somali coast.

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