The first ten weeks of 2014 have witnessed the resurgence of maritime kidnap-for-ransom off the coast of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. This distinct form of piracy does not receive the same international attention as does the hijacking and robbery of multi-million dollar tanker cargos, but it poses an omnipresent threat to greater number of mariners.
In the early hours of 18 January 2014 a 75,000-ton tanker, the MT Kerala, vanished off the coast of Angola. A sophisticated pirate gang hijacked the Greek-owned vessel, disabling its identifications system and communication equipment, and painting over its identifying markers.
While piracy attacks seem to be on the decline off the coast of Somalia, pirates may be warming up in West Africa. As I and others have blogged about before, the Gulf of Guinea, as well the Nigerian Delta, have recently turned into hotbeds of piracy. The Nigerian Delta in particular, because of vast amounts of oil production which takes place there annually, has attracted potential pirates interested in seizing oil and selling it for profit on the black market.
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Officer of the Watch 