News
IMB Sounds Nigerian Alarm
Pirate attacks off West Africa witnessed a dangerous increase in the first quarter of 2012, the International Maritime Bureau says.
It also warns the threat of piracy off Somalia has not been diluted despite a dip in activity in the region.
Ten attacks occurred off Nigeria in the first three months of this year, equal to the number seen in the whole of 2011, the watchdog reports. A further hit of Benin was also attributed to a Nigerian gang.
The tally includes two hijackings which involved the holding of 42 crew members, according to a report issued late last week.
Pottengal Mukundan, director of the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, said: “Nigerian piracy is increasing in incidence and extending in range.
“At least six of the 11 reported incidents in Nigeria occurred at distances greater than 70 nautical miles from the coast, which suggests that fishing vessels are being used as motherships to attack shipping further afield.”
Mukundan, pointing to an attack on a bulk carrier in which two were killed, notes while the number of reported incidents in Nigeria is still less than Somalia the level of violence against crew is “dangerously high”.
Figures show the number of attacks of Somalia fell but the IMB warns the threat is still significant.
In the first three months of 2012 43 hits were attributed to Somali pirates, while nine vessels were hijacked and 144 crew members were taken hostage.
“While the number of 2012 incidents and hijackings are less than reports for the same period in 2011 (97 incidents, 16 hijackings), it is unlikely that the threat of Somali piracy will diminish in the short to medium term unless further actions are taken,” the report said.
In total 102 attacks were counted in the quarter globally, down from 142 incidents a year ago.
Shipowners Divided Over Rules For Use Of Force
A heated row at the International Maritime Industries Forum has highlighted divisions within the shipping industry over what constitutes a proportionate response by armed guards when it comes to rules governing the use of force.
A presentation on maritime security delivered to the IMIF by Flagvictor chief executive Mark Hankey turned into a heated debate on use of force and the need to regulate private maritime security companies.
Mr Hankey showed the IMIF meeting a video of a group of US armed guards shooting at a pirate skiff.
The PMSC said that the guards were firing warning shots but there was no “onion layered” — or gradual — approach to protecting the ship and the guards continued to fire for some minutes as the vessel moved away from the pirates and the threat to the vessel became less urgent.
When Mr Hankey asked whether the audience thought the armed guards’ response was in proportion to the threat, several said they supported the PMSC’s actions.
Salvage expert and former International Salvage Union general manager John Noble said: “Let’s stop pussyfooting around. If you are being attacked, you need to get in there and defend yourself. Where is the harm in that?”
Other members of the audience agreed, using the analogy that a PMSC needs to be “the dog that barks louder”.
When Mr Hankey questioned how this approach would sit with shipowners’ lawyers and insurers, one Greek shipper said: “They can talk to me later.”
Holman Fenwick Wilan partner Elinor Dautlich said that while the standard contract has an additional advice document on rules on use of force, BIMCO’s Guardcon, which she helped to draft, did not apply internationally as every country had the right to decide its own individual rules.
She added that a “one size fits all” approach was not possible.
Speaking after the presentation, Mr Hankey said: “The audience certainly had strong views, which is to be expected on this emotive and important issue.”
IMIF chairman Jim Davies said the situation proved that rules on use of force must be clearly established, recognised by the court of human rights and defined internationally.
Speaking to Lloyd’s List separately, BIMCO chief maritime security officer Giles Noakes said many shipowners had embraced Guardcon while others perhaps had not.
“The reality of life is that the law and insurance surrounding PMSCs is difficult and it is absolutely essential to clarify this commercial risk now rather than waiting,” Mr Noakes warned.
He said that Guardcon’s main aim was to distance the master from liability for the actions of the PMSC. Mr Noakes argued that Enrica Lexie was a classic example of a master not being charged for the actions of Italian marines.
“People have had a lot to say about Guardcon but I can tell you this, it has been used more rapidly than any other BIMCO contract to date,” he said.
The International Maritime Organization will debate PMSC regulation when its Maritime Security Committee meets in May.
UK Armed Guards Look Vulnerable To Emerging Nations’ Prices
As regulation slowly and painfully filters down the private maritime security industry, a “proliferation” of new firms from emerging countries is inevitable and British PMSCs will price themselves out of the market, according to Norton Rose partner Philip Roche.
The big question, Mr Roche said, is whether shipping companies and charterers will want to continue to pay British rates?
“There will be a proliferation of PMSCs from countries like the Philippines and China. Their standards won’t necessarily be worse but they will have a different approach. It is likely that, like so many other industries, UK PMSCs are going to price themselves out of the market,” he predicted.
Mr Roche said that the legal wrangling surrounding the Enrica Lexie incident — in which two Italian marines shot dead two Indian fishermen they thought were pirates — reflects the concern that large parts of the industry still have about putting guns on ships.
“We have opened a Pandora’s box in a way and it has happened due to shipping’s ability to self help. The legal and insurance world has reluctantly followed. It has always been a question of when rather than if something shocking happens such as a negligent discharge or an armed guard opening fire and injuring innocent people. People may have thought the Enrica Lexie was shocking but it could be a lot worse.”
BIMCO published a standard contract for shipowners to use when hiring PMSCs last month and on the whole, Guardcon has been welcomed by the industry. However, Mr Roche said that while the contract has tried to deal with the grey area concerning liability, it has left several issues open.
“The master has absolute authority but Guardcon gives the decision to open fire to the head of the security detachment. The master can decide to stop firing but by then the damage could already be done. It seems to me that what might work practically may not work legally as it dilutes the master’s authority,” Mr Roche said.
“In the case of the Enrica Lexie, it amazed me that the master hasn’t been put in jail too. A master can be liable for any mistake that is made on his ship. You could argue that the master can step in and stop the shooting but if bullets are flying around and he is in the citadel, the idea that he can control the situation seems a bit fanciful to me.”
Nigeria Follows Somali Lead
Deployment of motherships by West African pirates is now an indisputable truth, according to Bergen Risk Solutions.
Four staging vessels were used to aid attacks on ships and oil rigs in the first quarter off the coast of Nigeria, it says.
In a report Bergen Risk explains the use of motherships the region is “now proven beyond doubt”, six months after it first raised the alarm on the issue.
The change in tactics has been accompanied by an increase in the range of pirate activity in the area.
Bergen Risk notes a 12 January attack on a bulk carrier 290 nautical miles from Lagos is the farthest reported offshore incident off Nigeria since it began work in the area in 2007.
Two skiffs and a fishing vessel were deployed in the assault.
Bergen Risk notes pirates have also changed their area of activity once again, leading to an upturn in activity in the Niger Delta during the first quarter.
It notes 13 separate attacks occurred in the first three months of 2012 as gangs which had shifted operations to Benin and Lagos “returned home”.
Shipowners Must Do More To Prevent Engineroom Fires
Shipowners are increasingly lax when it comes to upholding 2003 amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea Convention that are designed to prevent engineroom fires, according to a loss prevention circular from Gard.
The circular says that the risk of fire is highest when maintenance work is taking place or immediately afterwards, but shipowners can underestimate the risks that certain repairs present because they are perceived to be simple. Because of this, owners sometimes fail to implement safety precautions.
“Typical examples are missing hot-work permits and the absence of a fire watch,” the Norwegian P&I club claims. “Following a period of maintenance, the time available to prepare the vessel and get [it] back in operation can be limited and the refitting of removed insulation mats or spray shields is often left for the crew to complete during the voyage.”
The rules require ships to be equipped with jacketed pipes in high-pressure fuel oil delivery lines, for high-temperature surfaces at risk of flammable oil impingement after a failure of an oil line to be insulated, and for spray shields to be provided for flammable oil lines immediately above or near potential ignition sources.
However, the impact of the amendments has not been as strong as expected and an initial focus on the required preventive measures “may have diminished somewhat”, the circular says.
Because insulating materials may degrade over time, shipowners should regularly check these materials, as well as spray shields and drainage arrangements for jacketed fuel oil pipes, Gard says.
Although thermal imaging cameras can identify high-temperature surfaces in enginerooms, Gard believes, it is not mandatory to use them.
“Serious fires have arisen because of failure to recognise potential fire hazards and, above all, the best fire prevention is a well-trained crew,” Gard said. “Training and experience transfer between crew should aim to create a common understanding of all hazards present in an engineroom and their potential consequences.”
Drones Will Seek Pirates At Sea
The U.S. Navy says it will begin tests of airborne pilotless drones equipped with sensors that could distinguish small pirate boats at sea from other vessels.
Airborne tests of the Multi-Mode Sensor Seeker will take place this summer, the Office of Naval Research reported.
Placed on a robotic helicopter called Fire Scout and carrying advanced automatic target recognition software, the sensor will allow the helicopter to autonomously identify small boats on the water, reducing the workload of sailors operating it from control stations aboard Navy ships, researchers said.
“Sailors who control robotic systems can become overloaded with data, often sifting through hours of streaming video searching for a single ship,” said Ken Heeke, program officer in ONR’s Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department.
“The automatic target recognition software gives Fire Scout the ability to distinguish target boats in congested coastal waters using LADAR, and it sends that information to human operators, who can then analyze those vessels in a 3-D picture.”
The target software compares the 3-D imagery to vessel templates or schematics stored in the system’s memory, researchers said.
“The 3-D data gives you a leg up on target identification,” said Dean Cook, a researcher at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division said. “Infrared and visible cameras produce 2-D pictures, and objects in them can be difficult to automatically identify.”
Study Notes At Least Three Patterns Behind Pirate Attacks
Somali pirates are widening the area in which they operate and there may be evidence that they employing patterns of attack.
US Bureau of Political-Military Affairs assistant secretary Andrew Shapiro says Somali pirates now operate across 2.5m square nautical miles of ocean — equivalent to the size of the continental US — adding that attacks have extended to the waters off the coast of India.
“This increase makes it difficult for naval or law enforcement ships and other assets to reach the scene of a pirate attack quickly enough to disrupt an ongoing attack,” he said. “There is just too much water to patrol.”
Furthermore, acts of piracy have been reported near the Maldives Exclusive Economic Zone, after the first hijack took place in the country’s waters last week.
The Bolivia-flagged Eglantinewas hijacked this week 190 nautical miles northwest of Hoarafushi Island with 23 crew on board.
If piracy is spreading, as the evidence suggests, then understanding the patterns pirates adopt could be crucial.
Risto Talas, lecturer in maritime security risk and management at the Logistics Institute at Hull University and Michael Frodl, founder and head of C-Level Maritime Risks, have been researching the patterns of pirate attacks.
The final results will be published later this spring. However, preliminary results have identified three notable patterns.
Dr Talas said the first, termed “a drifter” scenario, involved one boat making a series of attacks not far from the internationally recognised transit corridor.
“The pirates chose to attack vessels of a similar draft and operating speed, but were unsuccessful on each occasion,” he said.
“However, what is of interest is the short distance between the two extremities: a mere 30.7 nautical miles, travelling on average just 3.4 nautical miles per day.”
The second pattern Dr Talas observed also took place near the corridor and involved three pirate boats collaborating, possibly in a pre-determined fashion, to confuse Navy forces.
A final pattern has been detected north of the Bab al-Mandeb strait — literally, the Gate of Grief — that separates Yemen and Djibouti. Here, attacks appeared to take place along a straight line that runs northwest to southeast.
Dr Talas said the pattern of the attacks suggested pirates operate along a transport corridor similar to that used by the people smugglers who used to attack private yachts between 1999 and 2005 along a corridor between Bosasso in north Somaliland and Al Mukalla on Yemen’s Indian Ocean coast.
The study, due to be published later this year, will also look at motherships in more detail. Dr Talas said he hoped the research would improve understanding of piracy and the risks that ships face.
Hostage Negotiator Convicted In Virginia
A federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, has convicted a Somali hostage negotiator who was apprehended last year by US forces in an unusual onshore secret operation.
The negotiator, Mohammad Saaili Shibin, was found guilty on 15 counts, including piracy, for his role in the incident involving the US yacht Quest in February 2011 and the hijacking of a German-owned combined chemical and oil tanker, the 2008-built, 13,168 dwt Marida Marguerite, which was held off the coast of Somalia from May to December 2010.Four US nationals on Quest were killed.
Shibin could be jailed for life at his sentencing, currently scheduled for August 13.
Shibin’s appearance at his indictment in Norfolk in April last year elicited much interest, as his arrest was said to mark the first time US forces went ashore in Somalia in pursuit of suspected pirates.
“This conviction is particularly important in two respects,” maritime regulatory consultant Dennis Bryant said.
“First, all acts for which Mr Shibin was convicted occurred ashore, which shows an effort to move enforcement of piracy up the food chain from just the individuals on the pirate skiff.
“Second, the convictions related to Marida Marguerite demonstrate a willingness on the part of the US to not limit enforcement and prosecution of pirates to just those involving vessels of its own registry.”
Shibin’s conviction for an attack on a non-US ship follows the sentencing in April last year of pirate Jaamac Ciidle for the November 2008-January 2009 hijacking of Clipper Group’s 1994-built, 7,120 dwt general cargoship CEC Future.
US Attorney Neil MacBride said: “Today’s verdict marks the conviction of the highest-ranking Somali pirate ever brought to the US.
“Shibin was among an élite fraternity of pirate negotiators — the vital link to any successful pirate attack. His skills were essential to obtain a ransom for those who attacked the vessel and the financiers who paid for the attack.”
BIMCO Launches Standard Armed Guard Contract
BIMCO’s Guardcon standard contract for employing security guards on vessels is now live, taking a lead in giving shipowners and private maritime security companies guidance on employment and use of security guards, with or without firearms, on merchant vessels.
Although BIMCO does not want armed security guards to become an institution on board ships, it recognises that while the industry waits for a permanent long-term solution, armed guards deter pirate attacks.
BIMCO chief officer legal and contractual affairs Grant Hunter said the shipping association had launched the contract to meet demand from the industry.
“In the absence of a standard contract for these services, shipowners and their P&I Clubs are currently faced with the difficult and time-consuming task of assessing large numbers of contracts from these security companies, all with varying terms and conditions,” he said.
“Guardcon’s objective is to create a contractual benchmark for the employment of security services so that minimum levels of insurance cover for PMSCs are established and that adequate safeguards are put in place to ensure that liabilities and responsibilities are properly addressed and that all necessary permits and licenses are obtained.”
Guardcon has been drafted in over three months by a small team of shipowners, underwriters, P&I Clubs and lawyers that comprised chairman Tor Langrud of Wilhelmsen, Norway; Daniel Carr of Stolt-Nielsen, US; Chris South of West of England P&I Club; Andrew Moulton of Ascot Underwriters; Stephen Askins of Ince & Co and Elinor Dautlich of Holman Fenwick Willan.
Armed Guards Using Floating Armouries
Despite the legal grey area that surrounds floating armouries, they may be permitted if private maritime security companies prove they can fulfil licensing requirements.
One PMSC told Lloyd’s List that almost all companies operating in the Gulf of Aden use “flotels” to store weapons, equipment and men offshore to avoid port charges and weapons regulation.
Lloyd’s List understands that some 12 floating armouries are stationed in international waters around high-risk areas. Due to a lack of formal regulation for the industry, practices like this have evolved as PMSCs looked to reduce their costs.
This has been controversial. “It is very bad practice and logistically hard to undertake and police,” says one critic. No international laws specifically prohibit PMSCs storing weapons offshore, but industry bodies are vague in their recommendations to members.
The Security Association for the Maritime Industry said it required accredited companies to hold relevant and correct licences.
The UK government-mandated Security in Complex Environments Group said that floating armouries must meet legal and jurisdictional requirements and “be in support of effective and high-quality operations”.
It said its members were “completely firm on the imperative of all aspects of operations being transparent to scrutiny and regulation” and that it was working “to develop a maritime standard that is robust and credible to national and international clients as well as to the industry itself”.
SCEG said: “The standard will — like all standards of this nature — have guidance annexes on important operational issues like training and weapons storage.”
Most PMSCs are based in the UK and must apply for an open general trade control licence for maritime anti-piracy to export or move weapons. Companies that apply for an OGTCL must list the armouries they propose to use.
Although the terms of the licence are not restricted to land-based armouries, any vessel used to store weapons must secure Export Control Organisation approval during the application process. It is not clear whether any vessel has received formal approval for weapon storage.
The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers is voluntary but moves are under way to turn it into an oversight mechanism for the industry.
The code requires accepted policies or procedures for management of weapons and ammunition to be put in place. These include secure storage, controls on issue of weapons, records showing to whom and when weapons were issued, identification and accounting of all ammunition and verifiable and proper disposal.
One source said: “Whether this is done on a floating platform or ashore, the needs remain the same and the issue will ultimately revolve around the flag states of the vessels used.
“If they provide the right environment and the flags allow them to act as floating armouries, then it wouldn’t seem to be too much of an issue.”