OilVoice - Saudi-Owned Super-Tanker Released by Somali Pirates after $3M Ransom Payment

Saudi-Owned Super-Tanker Released by Somali Pirates after $3M Ransom Payment

Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Sirius Star, the Saudi-owned super-tanker captured in the Indian Ocean on November 15, has been released following a ransom payment made by the vessel's owners Vela International.

The ship is now heading back towards Saudi Arabia, once again under the command of its captain, after a reported $3 million ransom payment secured the unharmed release of the 25 crew members and their ship after 40 days in captivity at the hands of Somalian pirates.

The hopeful pirates – seemingly unaware of the deepening global financial crisis – had initally demanded some $25 million for the safe return of the ship and its crew but were later forced to lower their inflated demands. In a unique attempt the ransom is believed to have been attached to a float and parachuted close to the ship from a light aircraft.

A mutlinational, and now liberated, crew included two Britons, 19 Filipinos, two poles, a Croat and a Saudi national.

The tanker was transporting the equivalent of two million barrels of crude – worth £68 million – when it was hijacked some 450 miles off of the coast of Mombasa, Kenya. The load the 1,009ft vessel was carrying equates to more than a quarter of Saudi Arbaia's daily export load.

The ship, owned by the Dubai-based shipping arm of Saudi Aramco, is by far the largest of its size to be targeted by pirates and represents a demonstration of might on behalf of the pirates to attack high value targets in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, through the Guld of Aden. The Sirius Star was on route to the United States, via the Cape of Good Hope when it was boarded.

A dramatic escalation in piracy off the Somalian coast has led to increased patrols by international warships, including NATO forces and the first European joint naval operation. Britain is among a number of countris to have recently sent a warship to the region.

As a consequence of the soaring cost of shipping insurance – a product of the hostilities – is that companies are opting with increased regularity to to take the longer route around South Africa instead of heading through the Suez Canal.

Other vessels still being held by pirates across the region, who have been paid a collective £50 million in the last 12-months alone, include the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying an altogether more dangerous 'booty' – 33 battle tanks.

In a strange twist of fate that reminds us all, particularly in the current volatitle economic climate that dominates daily headlines the globe over, that money doesn't neceassitly buy us happiness, five of the pirates involved later drowned with their share of the reported $3 million ransom payment when theit small boat capsized on route to land.