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Kenya: Somali pirates make $150M in a year
Somali pirates have collected more than $150 million in ransoms over the past year, Kenya's foreign affairs minister said Friday, calling on ship owners not to pay when their vessels are hijacked.In the past two weeks Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates have seized eight vessels including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil. Several hundred crew are now in the hands of Somali pirates. "We are advised that in the last 12 months, ransom to the excess of $150 million has been paid to these criminals and that is why they are becoming more and more audacious in their activities," Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said Friday that the Saudi government was not and would not negotiate with pirates, but what the ship's owners did was up to them. Meanwhile, the world's largest oil tanker company warned that it may divert cargo shipments, which would boost costs up to 40 percent. Frontline Ltd., which ferries five to 10 tankers of crude a month through the treacherous Gulf of Aden, said it was negotiating a change of shipping routes with some of its customers, including oil giants Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron. Martin Jensen, Frontline's acting chief executive, said that sending tankers around South Africa instead would extend the trip by 40 percent. Bermuda-based Frontline plans to make a decision whether to change shipping routes within a week, Jensen said. Posted by: ed 2008-11-21 |
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