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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: onedrill who wrote (19904)	10/6/2002 2:54:20 PM
From: lh56	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36161

appears not to be terror incident. "http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yemen-Tanker.html" "October 6, 2002 French Oil Tanker Ablaze Off Yemen By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:58 a.m. ET SAN`A, Yemen (AP) -- A fire broke out on a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen on Sunday, setting barrels of oil ablaze and sparking an explosion, Yemeni officials said. Officials said there was no indication of terrorism, saying an oil leak sparked the fire, but French officials said it was too early to say what the cause was. The captain said the fire started on the tanker and an explosion went off while crewmen tried to get the blaze under control, an unidentified official told the official SABA news agency. He said efforts were being made to contain the oil leakage from the ship. Security has been tightened at Yemeni ports since an attack on the USS Cole blamed on the al-Qaida terror network in 2000 killed 17 U.S. sailors during a refueling stop at Aden port. Yemen is believed to have been a longtime base for suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, though the goverment has emphasized its commitment to the U.S.-led war on terror. The tanker, the Limburg, caught fire about three miles off Yemen's Arabian Sea port of Mina al-Dabah. The vessel was coming from the Iranian port of Khark carrying 397,749 barrels of crude and was to load more at Mina al-Dabah. The Yemeni officials said 11 members of the 25 were initially rescued and taken to shore and the 14 others were taken off later after their attempts to put out the blaze failed. The tanker's captain issued a distress call to port authorities after the fire erupted, the officials said. ``The situation aboard the ship is difficult, and the flames are rising from the burning oil barrels,'' said the official Yemeni news agency Saba, quoting an unidentified source. The French Foreign Ministry said only that a serious fire had erupted on board and that Yemeni authorities were investigating. ``At this point, while waiting for the results of the investigation, any comment on the cause of the fire would be premature,'' the Foreign Ministry said. French President Jacques Chirac is following the situation closely, his spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told reporters it was ``too early to comment'' on the cause of the blast. A Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which has aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, said the French tanker's fire had prompted no changes in U.S. security measures. ``We are always on a security posture ready for any kind of situation,'' Lt. Chris Davis said without elaborating. The Bahrain-based Maritime Liaison Office, which coordinates communication between the U.S. Navy and the commercial shipping in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, issued an advisory in September warning ships of the possibility al-Qaida was planning attacks on oil tankers."