Somali pirates hijack ‘Sirius Star’ VLCC, largest ship ever seized

Somali pirates hijacked a Saudi Aramco crude tanker on November 15 some 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.

The US Navy said yesterday that the pirates were approaching a Somali port with ‘Sirius Star’ and her crew of 25. The crew who come from Britain, Croatia, Poland, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, are all said to be in good health. While Navies from various countries including USA and Russia have been patrolling the area of the Gulf of Aden piracy hot spot due to the outbreak of piracy in recent times, Graeme Gibbon Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service told that there would never be enough warships to patrol the entire area. “The whole area is 2.5 million square miles,” he said. The ‘Sirius Star’ is the largest ship ever hijacked by Somali pirates, and the 318,000DWT tanker is capable of carrying up to two million barrels of oil. However, the US Navy Fifth Fleet Commander Jane Campbell told that the Navy was unlikely to dispatch an aide vessel to the tanker, because it did not have weapons on board, like the Ukrainian ship ‘Faina’ which was seized by Somali pirates in September.

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New vessel to clean up Middle Eastern Pearl Island

Water Witch Workboats, Liverpool, UK, has just completed a new seven-metre Buddy Catamaran for Ronautica Middle East in Qatar.

Built to service The Pearl, an offshore manmade island with over 32 kilometers of new coastline and accommodating 1,500 berths, the vessel will be kept busy retrieving floating litter and debris using a collecting basket mounted between the hulls. The craft features a large working area with removable deck plates and handrails for versatility.  The aluminium wheelhouse provides accommodation for a crew of three coupled with plenty of secure storage. The step-down wheelhouse allows for low headroom of only 2.1 metres for navigating under low bridges and the oversized windows allow for good 360 degree visibility. The topside of the wheelhouse has a solar panel fitted to top up the dual charging batteries. The vessel was delivered complete with a removable davit and Honda driven pot puller / hauler for lifting aeration pumps from the seabed, making routine maintenance of the system easy work. A drop down ladder complete with hand grab rails was also fitted, using the same quick-fit fixing system utilized for the handrails.  When not in use this is neatly stowed on the handrail. The new all welded aluminium twin hulled craft is powered by a high thrust Yamaha BETL outboard engine matched with a dual thrust propeller for maximum maneuverability.

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BP to sunset Aussie solar plant

UK supermajor BP will close its Australian solar-cell factory by early next year to focus on bigger, lower-cost operations offshore.

The solar industry is facing increased competition globally and BP needs to expand its production scale and reduce costs, BP’s Australian unit said in a statement, adding that the Sydney plant lacked expansion potential. The factory is the BP’s smallest such plant and makes, each year, cells capable of producing a total of 50 megawatts. It would close by end-March, shedding about 200 jobs, BP said. BP invests about $1.5 billion a year in alternative energy and has solar-cell plants in countries including Germany, the US, Spain, France and India.

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