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Shipping companies are being forced to avoid the Suez Canal and send oil cargoes and other goods on a longer route around southern Africa due to widespread piracy off Somalia, industry officials have said.
Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk plans to sail some of its 50 oil vessels around the Cape of Good Hope instead, and Intertanko said several other tanker firms were doing the same. Norway's Frontline, which transports a large amount of the Middle East's oil to world markets, said it was contemplating a similar move.
The action is a result of the unprecedented capture by Somali pirates on November 16 of a giant Saudi Arabian supertanker filled with $100 million worth of oil, the biggest ship hijacking in history.
The increasing numbers of attacks in waters around Somalia this year have led to rising insurance costs for shipping companies, and the decision to redirect cargo around South Africa also threatens to push up costs for manufactured goods and commodities.
Head of the International Maritime Organization, Efthimios Mitropoulos alerted of "a series of negative repercussions" if ships are forced to take the alternative route. He said to reroute around the Cape would add around 12 days to a typical Gulf-to-Europe trip, holding up oil supplies, and potentially lifting freight rates by 25-30 percent.
Mitropoulos appealed to the UN Security Council to intensify the mandate of anti-piracy forces with "clear rules of engagement" and to make states bring to justice pirates they take into custody. Forces from NATO, the European Union and elsewhere are attempting to safeguard vessels on one of the world's busiest shipping paths, linking Europe to Asia. However many analysts following the situation say there can be no permanent end to the piracy without peace on land.
A meeting of senior officials from Arab League states, held in Egypt advised that African nations were incapable of handling the attacks and appealed for intervention by Europe, the United States and big Asian nations.
Since the hijacking of the supertanker Sirius Star, at least three other ships have been seized by the pirates, according to maritime officials. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister had stated on the Wednesday following the hijack that the supertanker's owners were negotiating over a possible ransom payment.
The audacity of the attack on the Sirius Star emphasizes the magnitude of a crime wave that experts say has been fuelled by the Islamist rebellion onshore and multi-million-dollar ransoms by the pirates.
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