Red flags are raised over West African piracy
Another red flag was raised over the worsening maritime security situation in West Africa last week when seafarers became eligible for danger money in the area.
Employers and unions in the International Bargaining Forum (IBF) agreed the territorial waters of Nigeria and Benin have become dangerous enough to justify doubling seafarers’ pay from next month. The IBF has a similar “danger money” agreement covering the high-risk area where attacks by Somali pirates are likely.
The West African area had already been added to the list maintained by Lloyd’s Joint War Committee (JWC). Hull insurers deemed the Gulf of Guinea a high-risk area following a spate of incidents last year that saw ships being hijacked and cargoes of gasoil stolen. Higher insurance costs have been blamed for a 70% fall in the number of vessels using Benin’s port of Cotonou, vital not just to the economy of one of the poorest countries in the world but to its landlocked neighbours that are also dependent on the port.
The decisions by the IBF and JWC reveal that, although the risks to shipping in the region have been recognised for some time, success in suppressing attacks has been limited. Last year the UN Security Council passed a resolution acknowledging the crisis and calling for international support for the region’s attempts to combat the threat.
Nigeria and Benin are already carrying out joint naval patrols, but the attacks on shipping have continued and spread over a larger area. In one of the most serious incidents the Master and Chief Engineer on a bulk carrier died when pirates swept the bridge with gunfire as they approached by boat. The deadly attack last month had taken place 110 nautical miles off Nigeria, but an official from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) told a debate at the UN last month hardly any of the countries in the region can “boast enough maritime surveillance and force projection capability beyond 100 nautical miles off the coast”.
The meeting of the UN Security Council discussed the findings of a recent assessment mission that estimated the cost of piracy to the region at USD 2 billion a year. With growing evidence of the use of motherships to launch attacks far out at sea, the delegate from Germany said the mission’s report had confirmed “an alarming situation”.
The region’s waters are, the meeting heard, rife with robbery, drug-trafficking and people-smuggling usually carried out by organised crime, while some incidents are politically motivated. Earlier this month, for example, a Nigerian separatist movement that has used kidnapping for both political and financial reasons warned they would “fire rockets” at ships that tried to evade boarding attempts by manoeuvring and would ensure such ships were “set alight”.
The same group, however, claimed to have been negotiating with a separate gang for the release of three seafarers – two Russians and a Filipino – kidnapped at gunpoint from a Dutch reefer ship in Nigerian coastal waters last month but freed unharmed at the weekend. The three, it pointed out, were not connected with its main target, the Nigerian oil industry, that has for some years suffered from attacks on oil rigs and offshore support vessels.
Cargoes and valuable items on ships have been the main targets of West African pirates in the past, but the fear now is that predictions the success of the Somali pirates in earning millions of dollars in ransoms for kidnapped crews would spawn imitators are now coming true. The statistics – so far, at least – suggest they are poor imitations. Out of 439 incidents of piracy and armed robbery reported worldwide last year, 237 took place off Somalia compared with just 38 off Nigeria and Benin, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
Under-reporting of incidents in West Africa, however, means the actual number is bound to be much higher, with the IMB estimating there were at least 34 unreported incidents off Nigeria alone. The IMB also pointed out the average length of captivity in West African incidents is 10 days, compared with six months in Somalia, although it added the attacks in the former can be more violent.
Another key difference between Somalia piracy and its West African counterpart is that the former largely preys on passing traffic. In contrast, the Gulf of Guinea is the gateway through which the bordering countries ship their agricultural exports such as cocoa, coffee and cotton. But by far the biggest export-earner is oil: current production of five million barrels a day (2.2 mbd from Nigeria) is forecast to double over the next 10 years and to make up 25% of US imports by 2015. Iron ore exports are also rising and are expected to make up 10% of global production; shipments by one company from Liberia alone are expected to reach four million tonnes next year.
Some at the UN debate pointed to problems ashore – from high levels of unemployment among young men to the ready availability of arms – that needed to be addressed in parallel with improvements in maritime security. There are no failed states like Somalia in the region but they lack not just resources but also the legal framework to bring pirates to justice, meaning that in some cases suspects are not even charged.
While the machinery of both regional and international diplomacy grinds on (a summit involving the UN and local organisations including ECOWAS is planned), commercial interests will be forced to take their own measures. Ships may increasingly have to employ practices honed in the battles with Somali pirates, including perhaps the use of private armed guards, but the extra security provided by the multinational naval forces in the Indian Ocean cannot be immediately guaranteed.
Enough red flags have now been raised over West African piracy for it to be taken as seriously as that off Somalia. If not, the costs are likely to be felt both by local economies and shipping. The crucial difference may, however, lie in the one thing that really counts: oil.
Source: BIMCO, Andrew Guest
