Sana, Yemen, Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- A French oil tanker was rammed and badly damaged by a small boat packed with explosives as it was about to load at a Yemeni port in the Gulf of Aden, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the French embassy.
All but one of the Limburg's 25 crew members were rescued from the burning ship, AFP said, citing owner Euronav Luxembourg SA. Yemen's transport minister, Saeed Yafai, attributed the blast to an accident in one of the ship's tanks, the official Saba news agency reported.
The incident comes two years after the USS Cole was attacked at the port of Aden, 450 miles to the east, killing 17 U.S. sailors. The Limburg was preparing to take on 1.5 million barrels of crude at an offshore terminal near Al-Shihr in Hadramaut province when the explosion occurred, Yemeni officials said.
``It seems to be an attack in the same style as the USS Cole,'' French Vice Consul Marcel Goncalves told AFP. The U.S. has blamed that attack on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
The French foreign ministry said it was too early to determine the cause of today's explosion. A U.S. Central Command spokeswoman in Saudi Arabia declined to comment, and a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Persian Gulf fleet in Bahrain said he had no more information.
BP Plc, Europe's biggest oil company, leased the Limburg and had sub-let it, a BP spokesman said. Its operator, Franceship Management, is a unit of Euronav, which is owned by Cie. Maritime Belge SA, based in Antwerp, Belgium.
``We consider this a deliberate act,'' Jacques Moizan, a director at Luxembourg-based Euronav, told AFP.
The vessel, built in 2000, was picking up a pilot to bring it to a terminal when the captain reported an explosion at 9:15 a.m. local time, Euronav said in a statement. The crew was unable to control the flames and abandoned ship at noon, the company said. A Bulgarian crew member was missing.
The explosion left a gaping hole in the 1,100-foot-long vessel, AFP said. Tugboats and salvage ships were trying to put out the fire and control any oil spill, Euronav said.
Oil Prices
``This is a very serious development,'' said Alain le Chevalier, head of Middle East operations for Total Fina Elf SA, France's biggest oil company. ``The same thing could happen inside the Persian Gulf. Oil tankers are very, very easy targets.''
Crude oil in New York has climbed close to 50 percent this year to $29.62 a barrel, partly because President George W. Bush has said the U.S. may go to war against Iraq, which holds the world's second-largest reserves.
The explosion may boost oil prices further as concern grows that supplies from the Middle East, which accounts for about a quarter of world total, may be under threat ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter.
``This will certainly affect prices, but for the time being oil flows will continue -- you can't blow up the demand for oil,'' said Shervin Limbert, general manager of Gulf Interstate Oil Co., which buys and sells oil in the Gulf region.
Oil prices soared more than 10 percent to above $37 a barrel on the day of the Cole attack. The U.S. this year sent about 100 military advisers to train security forces patrolling Yemen's 1,500-mile coastline.
Goncalves was too busy to comment further, an assistant told Bloomberg News when reached by phone at the French embassy in Yemen.
`Extreme Caution'
On Sept. 10, the U.S. Navy said al-Qaeda might attack oil tankers in the Middle East. The Navy had no details on the timing or means, but ``the threat should be regarded seriously,'' spokesman Jeff Alderson said at the time.
Ship captains should exercise ``extreme caution'' in passageways such as the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the open sea, and Bab al-Mandeb at the bottom of the Red Sea, Alderson said.
Royal Dutch/Shell Group and other international companies shipping oil out of the Persian Gulf have been warned by U.K. intelligence that tankers are becoming target of attack, a person familiar with the matter said.
``We never discuss security issues,'' said Kate Hill, a London-based spokeswoman for Shell, declining to comment.
The U.K. intelligence agency suggested that allied naval forces should escort oil tankers in convoys to deter any attack, the person said. Such escorts would be a ``daunting task,'' Commander Frank Merriman, a U.S. military spokesman, said.
Iran and Iraq attacked each other's oil tankers during their war in the mid 1980s, eventually leading to U.S. Navy military escorts of tanker exports from other Gulf nations.
About 13 million barrels of crude oil a day is exported by ship through the Persian Gulf, which narrows to 2-mile-wide shipping channels at the Straits of Hormuz, according to the U.S. Energy Department's Energy Information Administration. |
