Pirates seize oil supertanker

Source: Agencies  |   2008-11-18  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

PIRATES have seized a Saudi-owned supertanker fully laden with oil off east Africa, capturing the biggest vessel yet in a shipping zone where Somali pirates strike almost daily, the United States navy said.

Saudi-owned television station Al Arabyia said the Sirius Star had been freed, but the US navy and Saudi Aramco, which owns the supertanker, both said they had no knowledge of any release.

The hijacking of the vessel is certain to add to pressure for concerted international action to tackle the threat posed by pirates from anarchic Somalia to one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

"This is unprecedented. It's the largest ship that we've seen pirated," said Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet. "It's three times the size of an aircraft carrier."

The Sirius Star held a cargo of as much as 2 million barrels of oil ?? more than one quarter of daily Saudi Arabia's daily exports. Reports of the hijacking helped trim early losses in global crude oil prices.

The hijacking, 830 kilometers southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, was in an area far beyond the Gulf of Aden, where most of the attacks on shipping have taken place and where some foreign navies have begun patrols.

The Sirius Star had been heading for the US via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, skirting the continent instead of heading through the Gulf of Aden and then the Suez Canal.

There were no reports of damage to the ship, Christensen said. He declined to say if the US navy was considering taking action to rescue the tanker, which had 25 crew from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia. "We are evaluating the situation," he said.

Chaos onshore in Somalia, where Islamist forces are fighting a Western-backed government, have spawned a wave of piracy. Shipowners have paid out millions of dollars in ransoms.