In previous years when you had a pirate attack, what it meant is that you have a sampan or a boat coming up to a cargo ship, pirates throwing up some ropes, scrambling on board, ransacking the ship for valuables, stealing money and then running away. But the last piracy attack that took place in the Straits of Malacca showed a different pattern. The pirates conducted the operation almost with military precision. Instead of just ransacking the ship for valuables, they took command of the ship, and steered the ship for about an hour, and then eventually left with the captain in their captivity.
Passage through the Malacca Straits involves a five-hundred-mile voyage along narrow shipping lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. One-fourth of world trade and fifty percent of all oil passes through this critical waterway aboard two hundred ships a day. A Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), slightly longer than three football fields, carries two million barrels of crude oil, which when refined is about what all the cars and SUVs in America consume in one day. “Armed pirates at night scamper up the sides, creep aboard, take over the ship, tie up the crew; the VLCC will steam out of control down the narrow, heavily trafficked channel and collide with another ship or break up on the rocks, closing this vital commercial conduit and creating an economic and environmental catastrophe of global proportions.” Now suppose that instead of a VLCC, pirates hijack a tanker carrying six hundred tons of liquefied natural gas and turn it over to terrorists. They turn it into a floating bomb and sail it into the port of Singapore. The explosion “would cause a fireball with a diameter of 1,200 meters, destroying almost everything within this range and causing a large number of fatalities and casualties well beyond it.” Costs due to the closure of this port “could easily exceed US$200 billion per year.”
Passage through the Malacca Straits involves a five-hundred-mile voyage along narrow shipping lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. One-fourth of world trade and fifty percent of all oil passes through this critical waterway aboard two hundred ships a day. A Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), slightly longer than three football fields, carries two million barrels of crude oil, which when refined is about what all the cars and SUVs in America consume in one day. “Armed pirates at night scamper up the sides, creep aboard, take over the ship, tie up the crew; the VLCC will steam out of control down the narrow, heavily trafficked channel and collide with another ship or break up on the rocks, closing this vital commercial conduit and creating an economic and environmental catastrophe of global proportions.” Now suppose that instead of a VLCC, pirates hijack a tanker carrying six hundred tons of liquefied natural gas and turn it over to terrorists. They turn it into a floating bomb and sail it into the port of Singapore. The explosion “would cause a fireball with a diameter of 1,200 meters, destroying almost everything within this range and causing a large number of fatalities and casualties well beyond it.” Costs due to the closure of this port “could easily exceed US$200 billion per year.”
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