By Renee Maltezou and Jonathan Saul
ATHENS (Reuters) -A liquefied natural gas tanker successfully outran pirates approaching it in a speedboat off the coast of Somalia on Friday, maritime security sources said, as worries grow of a resurgence of piracy after years of calm.
A recent spate of armed attacks on vessels in the region, including the first involving suspected Somali pirates in a year, has revived concerns over the security of shipping lanes used to transport critical energy and goods to global markets.
Friday’s incident occurred close to the area of an attack a day earlier targeting the Malta-flagged products tanker Hellas Aphrodite, an official with maritime security firm Diaplous said.
The Marshall Islands-flagged LNG tanker, which maritime security sources identified as Al Thumama, reported an approach by a small craft with three people on board, British maritime risk management group Vanguard and maritime security sources said.
The master reported that the tanker, which was en route from Ras Laffan, Qatar to Swinoujscie, Poland via the Cape of Good Hope, outran the speedboat, the sources said.
The vessel’s operator, Japan’s NYK LNG Shipmanagement, declined to comment.
EU DISPATCHES WARSHIP TO TROUBLED SOMALI WATERS
It was unclear whether pirates remained on the Hellas Aphrodite on Friday. Its crew took refuge in a fortified safe room when it was boarded on Thursday, though they retained control of the vessel.
The European Union’s naval force despatched a warship to the area. It was expected to arrive on Friday.
Though once a major menace around the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, Somali pirate gangs have been relatively inactive in recent years following a coordinated crackdown by Western naval forces and military action targeting their onshore bases.
More recently, Yemen’s Iran-affiliated Houthi militia has posed a greater threat to shipping through the Red Sea, which leads into the Gulf of Aden. The group first launched attacks on commercial ships in November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While the Houthis have agreed to a truce on targeting U.S.-linked shipping, many shipping companies remain wary of resuming voyages through those waters.
That diversion of maritime vessels has pushed traffic south along East Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline, creating opportunities for attacks by Somali gangs, maritime security sources said.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Jonathan Saul, Yannis Souliotis, Alexander Winning and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Joe Bavier)
