November 20, 2008

Newsweek: The Somali pirates’ advantage

The pirates will start negotiations with a demand for an outrageously high amount of money. If you take a look at the MV Faina [a hijacked Ukrainian ship carrying 33 Soviet-made tanks], the pirates originally demanded $35 million. That was at the end of September, and they’re now down to $8 million, which is still quite a hefty amount for such a ship—the usual ransom amount is $2 million. For the Sirius Star I think they will try to get as much out of it as possible. However, the ship is quite dangerous for them. It’s far too big. Navigational errors could happen, and you could have a disastrous oil spill damaging the whole coast of Somalia with the 2 million barrels aboard. I’m not really sure that the pirates were well advised to attack such a huge ship.

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