Oil tanker terror hijacks easy, attacks complex – Experts

Supertankers, the hulking, slow-moving ships that transport half the world’s oil, have few defenses against terrorist hijackers like those envisioned by Osama bin Laden, security experts told the Associated Press on Saturday.

Al-Qaida operatives with enough training could easily manage to capture ships carrying millions of gallons of oil or liquefied natural gas. All they would have to do is imitate the tactics of Somali pirates who already use small boats to overpower tanker crews in mostly remote locations, the experts said. Few supertankers have armed guards, due to gun import laws and the risk of accidental gunfire igniting explosive cargos.

But once terrorists captured a supertanker, it wouldn’t be so easy to sow the economic chaos and costly environmental destruction bin Laden desired and outlined in secret files captured from his Pakistan hideout. It’s actually extremely complex to blow up a supertanker or even sink it near heavily guarded oil shipping lanes like the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal or the Strait of Hormuz at the end of the Persian Gulf.

“It would only be a risk if they could sail it undetected and had worked out how to blow it up, which is pretty complicated,” said Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence.

The FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a confidential warning to authorities and the energy industry Friday that al-Qaida was seeking information on the size and construction of tankers.

The newly revealed plot showed that while bin Laden was scheming about the next strike to kill thousands of Americans, he also believed an attack on the oil industry in “non-Muslim waters” could create a worldwide economic panic that would send oil prices soaring and hurt Westerners at the gas pump.

Other bin Laden documents revealed that the terror group identified New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago as important cities that should be attacked. Al-Qaida also identified key dates for those attacks, including the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Christmas, July 4th and during Obama’s State of the Union address in January.

Oil already is a known target. On Saturday, a truck tanker carrying oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan exploded in northwestern Pakistan as people tried to siphon off fuel, killing 15. Fourteen other NATO oil trucks were damaged in a bombing at a nearby border town, but no one was hurt.