A more
aggressive military approach is the only answer to an escalation of piracy off
the world’s biggest oil tanker company said Friday.
think that’s the only solution,” Martin Jensen, acting chief executive
officer of Oslo-based Frontline, told AFP.
Frontline, which has 80 tankers, is considering whether to divert its ships
from
treacherous
quick international force or situation being applied”.
whose company has an office in
said Frontline was holding serious internal talks about whether to avoid the
with owners of the cargo.
main consideration, that’s the safety of the crew and the ship,” he said.
added that piracy was not a problem that one company could solve alone, and his
preference was for a military approach .
doesn’t solve anything by diverting,” he said.
weekend pirates seized their biggest prize so far, the Saudi Arabian oil tanker
Sirius Star. It was loaded with two million barrels of oil when they attacked
it hundreds of miles (kilometres) off the coast of
have demanded a ransom of 25 million dollars, while more than a dozen other
vessels are being held in Somali waters by pirates.
of their audacity,
NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, called for a land military force to confront the
pirates on their home turf.
four warships into the Gulf of Aden last month on anti-piracy duties and to
escort aid vessels, while a European Union anti-piracy operation off the coast
of
is to begin on December 8.
world’s navies are struggling to find the right deterrent and any use of force
might have little effect, experts say.
his ships travelled near pirate-infested
the Front Voyager, recently had a narrow escape.
pirate boat approached but before they got too close the ship was able to get
naval assistance,” he said, adding that the problem was escalating.
world’s biggest shipping lines,
A.P. Moeller-Maersk, said Thursday it would divert some of its vessels around
the tip of
avoid pirates in the
statement, it said ships that are too slow — or with decks low enough for
pirates to scramble aboard — would “seek alternative routing” around
the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar.
they could join a naval convoy through the
if one were available.
shipping company Odfjell said on Monday it, too, would choose the longer, more
expensive but also safer route around the
Hope
the southern route was about 40 percent longer, “so of course that would
be quite a cost”.
world’s largest container shipping firms, Neptune Orient Lines, said it was
“closely monitoring events” in the
but was not planning to reroute ships.
relative risk of attack is lower for fast high-decked container ships than it
is for slower low-decked vessels such as bulk carriers or tankers,” said
NOL spokesman Paul Barrett.
Singapore-based NOL has comprehensive.
