Efforts on to release supertanker

Dubai: Contact has been established between the Somali pirates and the owners of the oil supertanker that was hijacked off the Kenyan coast on Sunday.

According to the spokesperson of the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet, which has been monitoring the movement of the 330-metre-long tanker, Sirius Star, pirates have taken the ship to their stronghold of Eyl along Somalia’s coast. The Dubai-based Vela International Marine Ltd., which operates the tanker, said crisis teams had been established to seek the release to the 25 crew members on board the ship. The crew consists of two British, two Polish, one Croatian, one Saudi and 19 Philippines nationals. In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it was “awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel.” This is the first occasion when a supertanker, with a cargo of 2 million barrels of oil valued at $100 million, has been pirated. The hijack triggered on Monday a jump in oil prices. It is also for the first time that a large vessel has been hijacked, so far away from the coast — 450 nautical miles from the Kenyan shoreline. The supertanker, three times larger than an American aircraft carrier, is owned by Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Aramco.
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