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Owner of hijacked tanker says crew safe

The owner of a Saudi oil supertanker hijacked by Somali pirates over the weekend said the 25 crew members were safe and the ship was fully loaded with crude — a cargo worth about US$100 million at current prices.

Dubai-based Vela International Marine Ltd, a subsidiary of Saudi oil company Aramco, said in a statement on Monday that company response teams had been set up and were working to ensure the release of the crew and the vessel.

The US Navy said the MV Sirius Star was seized far off the coast of Kenya on Saturday and that the bandits were taking the ship to a Somali port known as a hub of pirate activity. It announced the hijacking on Monday when it first received the information.

The statement posted on Vela’s Web site late on Monday said the ship was hijacked on Sunday. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

Attacks by Somali pirates have surged this year as bandits have become bolder, better armed and capable of operating hundreds of miles from shore.

A coalition of warships from eight nations, as well as from NATO and the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is patrolling a critical zone in the Gulf of Aden leading to and from the Suez Canal, where most of the more than 80 attacks this year have occurred.

The Saudi tanker, however, was seized far to the south of the patrolled zone, about 833km southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, the US Navy said.

Maritime security experts said they have tracked a southward spread in piracy over the last several weeks into a vast area of the Indian Ocean, adding with alarm that the area would be almost impossible to patrol.

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet said yesterday it was monitoring the situation but didn’t expect to send warships to surround the vessel as it has done with a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weaponry that was seized off the Somali coast on Sept. 25 and remains in pirate hands.

“I don’t anticipate any US ships on station,” said Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, speaking from its headquarters in Bahrain.

He would not elaborate on how the Navy was watching the hijacked tanker.

“We remain deeply concerned because this attack represents a fundamental change in pirates’ ability to hijack bigger vessels farther out at sea,” Christensen said.

The Sirius Star is the largest ship ever taken by Somali pirates, though large chemical tankers and freighters have also been hijacked.

It is “the largest pirated vessel in the region” to date, Christensen said.

At 329m, it is the length of an aircraft carrier and can carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

“We are very concerned that a [ship] of this size has been hijacked. We have safety concerns, security concerns, environmental concerns,” said Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau’s regional piracy center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“Of course, as long as there is no firm deterrent, pirates will continue to attack. The risk is low and returns are extremely high. You will see more and more of such attacks,” he said yesterday.

Somali fishermen and witnesses on shore said the pirates apparently anchored the ship last night in Harardhere, a pirate stronghold some 430km by land from Eyl.

The Saudi tanker was just a few miles from shore Tuesday morning, said Abdinur Haji, a fisherman.

“As usual, I woke up at 3am and headed for the sea to fish, but I saw a very, very large ship anchored less than three miles [5km] off the shore,” he said in a telephone interview.

He said two small boats floated out to the ship and 18 men — presumably other pirates — climbed aboard with ropes woven into a ladder.

“I have been fishing here for three decades, but I have never seen a ship as big as this one,” he said. “There are dozens of spectators on shore trying to catch a glimpse of the large ship, which they can see with their naked eyes.”

Vela, the ship’s owner and operator, says it is one of the largest crude oil tanker companies in the world.

Including the Sirius Star, Vela owns and operates a fleet of 19 vessels classed as Very Large Crude Oil Carriers and five product tankers of various sizes. It transports supplies primarily between the Middle East, Europe and the US Gulf Coast, according to the company’s Web site.

The Sirius Star was sailing under a Liberian flag and its crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia. A British Foreign Office spokesman said there were at least two British nationals on board.
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