Al Qaeda and the Threat to Tankers

Count me among those who think there has been too much information released regarding the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. One of the surprises, I think, has been the amount of intelligence from that raid discussed in public. Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but it seems to me when this much collected intelligence in reported in the press, what it really means is we didn't get much useful intelligence at all. Still, this is noteworthy.

"In 2010, there was continuing interest by members of al Qaeda in targeting oil tankers and commercial infrastructure at sea," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said in a statement Friday. He added that "we are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural-gas sector overseas or in the United States," and said "it is unclear if any further planning has been conducted since mid-last year."

Last summer, a Japanese oil tanker was attacked while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, though it suffered only minor damage. Investigators concluded that was a terrorist attack.

The materials gathered by U.S. Navy SEALs in the raid earlier this month in Abbottabad, Pakistan—including Osama bin Laden's personal journal—sketched a broad picture of targets the terror group would like to attack, but provided little detail about actual plans to carry out such missions, officials said. The targets revealed so far, including commercial aviation and railroads, have long been in al Qaeda's playbook.

Oil tankers and oil-industry infrastructure also have been a preferred target for al Qaeda and associated groups, in keeping with the militants' stated goal of causing economic disruption to the West and to Arab regimes they consider hostile. In 2002, militants used a small skiff packed with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a French-owned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen in 2002.

It is very difficult to sink a tanker, but it is proving to be very possible to hijack one - at least based on what we have seen from Somalia. Lloyds List ran a story several days ago about how the mariners who work on several tanker lines that ship out of the Gulf are getting very frustrated and are thinking about boycotting working on unprotected tankers moving through the pirate infested region. A refusal by the civilian mariner crews to work on tankers is essentially the same effect of shutting down oil in the Gulf.

As a result several companies are putting aside their concerns about security teams and will potentially be arming up large tankers moving through the region. One side effect of adding security teams on tankers would be to potentially further protect tankers from Al Qaeda style attacks. Another side effect is that we may now have a new permanent cost added to energy supplies traveling at sea from the region.

In that context, I am not sure which is the bigger threat. Is the possibility of Al Qaeda terrorist attacks against tankers a significant threat or just one more attack vector to be concerned about? I tend to think the refusal of civilian mariners to work on ships without security protection from pirates presents a bigger concern over time, because the extra costs associated with either paying mariners more to work without security or paying for the constant presence of security on tankers is a cost that simply gets passed on to the consumer.

Those costs come before adding insurance costs and potential legal costs that may get applied as shippers put dudes with guns on ships loaded with petroleum and other highly flammable materials.