Pirates Take Tanker in Strait of Malacca Near Singapore

Pirates hijacked a second tanker in a month off the Malaysian coast near Singapore, Asia's biggest oil-trading hub, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Ten pirates armed with guns and knives boarded a vessel about 7.3 nautical miles (13.5 kilometers) west of Malaysia's Pulau Kukup in the Strait of Malacca, forcing the crew to transfer its gasoil cargo to another ship, the IMB's Piracy Reporting Center said in a Nov. 7 incident report on its website. The attack was about 34 miles west of Singapore, according to the co-ordinates recorded by the agency.

The Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean, is one of the world's two 'most strategic chokepoints' for oil trade along with the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It's the shortest sea route between the Middle East and Asia with about 15.2 million barrels of oil a day transported along the waterway in 2011, according to the EIA. About 90 percent of that was crude.

'Perhaps it's the work of some kind of gang,' said Captain Mathew Mathai, the marine manager at the Nippon Maritime Center in Singapore, a research group funded by the Nippon Foundation. The attack is similar to those occurring off the coast of Nigeria because the pirates siphoned off the cargo, he said by phone today. 'You need an empty ship to transfer the cargo to. It may be a syndicate in operation.'

Gasoil Cargo

The oil-products tanker contained gasoil, the IMB said in an e-mailed statement today. A fishing vessel was the only ship to be hijacked in the Strait of Malacca in all of last year, according to the organisation's website.

The incident follows the hijacking of an oil-products tanker off Malaysia's Pulau Aur in the South China Sea on Oct. 10, about 67 miles northeast of Singapore. Pirates stole the ship's cargo before abandoning it on Oct. 15, the IMB's website shows. The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia reported that a vessel called the Danai 4, carrying marine gasoil from Singapore to Vietnam, lost contact with its owners in the area on Oct. 10, according to an alert on its website.

Singapore, at the southern end of the Malacca Strait, was the world's biggest container port in 2012 after Shanghai and the busiest trans-shipment hub. It's the site of Royal Dutch Shell Plc's largest oil refinery globally.

There have been 206 reported incidents of piracy worldwide this year, including 11 hijackings, data from the IMB showed. The number of attacks fell globally to 188 in the nine months to September from 233 for the same period last year. The number of armed robbery attacks on vessels in Indonesia is rising, the IMB said on its website Oct. 17.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ann Koh in Singapore at akoh15@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

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